Mementoes as Transitional Objects in Human Displacement

Abstract

This article argues for a theoretical extension in anthropology from the post-Cartesian depiction of body and mind as one (rather than as separable) to the idea that this composite body-mind can be regarded as enmeshed in social trails created by the movement of objects. Movements of persons therefore occur with or in relation to the objects to which people attach themselves. Such everyday movements need to be contrasted with those dramatically resulting from forcible human displacement, in which refugees, for instance, take what items they can both for immediate practical use but also in order either to re-establish or re-define personal and collective origins. The article concludes by suggesting that, as mementoes of sentiment and cultural knowledge and yet also as bases of future re-settlement, the ‘transitional objects’ carried by peoples in crisis inscribe their personhood in flight but offer the possibility of their own de-objectification and re-personalization afterwards.