“What you See is What You Do not Get”: Expressive Non-Occurrent Gifts and Shadow Gift Relations

Résumé 0

For Annette Weiner, ‘keeping-while-giving’ refers to objects held back from exchange which contribute to the value of what is given by substantiating the power of the group to keep its ancestral identity intact, as expressed in the inalienable wealth one retains. This essay supports Weiner’s insistence on the importance of paying attention not only to what is given but also to what is kept back, whilst also elaborating a quite different modality of keeping-while-giving. What is kept back, in the cases we discuss, are virtual (imagined) forms of gift. Moreover, what is kept from exchange frequently does not contribute to but rather detracts from the value of what is given. This is because what is given is frequently evaluated in relation to what might have been given but was not. Indeed, the ‘extreme’ generosity displayed by various wealthy individuals over recent years is taken to demonstrate the insufficiency of governments that cannot or do not give, evidencing that they do not care for their vulnerable citizens. Thus, the study of practices of giving must incorporate critique and self-critiques. We explore how the relation between the virtual ungiven and what is actually given may come to form the basis of social criticism. Giving is a technology of the imagination because it is a process which precipitates the imagination of a relation between an actual gift and a double that is virtual but nonetheless real because it exists in the form of a manifold of potentials for how the gift could be.