Abstract/Summary

As the title indicates, an emphasis on things always makes me feel uncomfortable, not to say unhappy. Have we not been here before, and have we not, with good reason, rejected the auratic view of things? What is the thing, or even the thing in itself, and why is there this cyclically recurring nostalgia for the thing in its pure aspect? Let us think about the question in a number of stages. Firstly, the present day; secondly we will examine the positioning of the “thing”; thirdly we will make an attempt at the deconstruction of subject and object, and fourthly we will consider this thing in the context of the exhibiting institution.