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Catttt Posted 6 years ago
Grammar

The signs of their labour

1. Does "the emotional ambivalence of sublimation" mean "sublimation does not have a certain and constant emotional state but it is emotionally uncertain"?


2. Does "the signs of their labour" mean "the processes of their creation and the material they are made up of" or "the effort that has been made in order to make them"?


3. Does "accrues debt" mean "which invokes the concept of debt (as it is mentioned in the title of the artwork as well)"?


Text:

They are discarded objects that we no longer need, the emotional significance they once had having been cast on the scrapheap. More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid, 1987, a tapestry comprised of these abandoned and no-longer-significant knitted toys and dolls, exposes the emotional ambivalence of sublimation as a cultural ideal and brings the pre-genital sexual origins of creativity into relief. Stitched together in this bizarre tapestry, the morphology of these objects signifies at least two things. On the one hand, there is the fact that these toys are made by adults in the image of how they perceive childhood – an idealised state of innocence and cuteness. On the other hand, these toys display the signs of their labour, which is given an emotional value that in turn accrues debt. ‘If each one of these toys took six hundred hours to make then that’s six hundred hours of love; and if I gave this to you, you owe me six hundred hours of love; and that’s a lot. And it adds up because if you can’t pay it back right away it keeps accumulating.’

  

Top answer

catttt 1. Does "the emotional ambivalence of sublimation" mean "sublimation does not have a certain and constant emotional state but it is emotionally uncertain"? No.

  • catttt 1.
  • Does "the emotional ambivalence of sublimation" mean "sublimation does not have a certain and constant emotional state but it is emotionally uncertain"?
  • No.
  • "Ambivalence" denotes two simultaneous, opposite states.
  • Apparently, we have a love/hate relationship with sublimation as a cultural ideal.
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1 Answers
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catttt1. Does "the emotional ambivalence of sublimation" mean "sublimation does not have a certain and constant emotional state but it is emotionally uncertain"?

No. "Ambivalence" denotes two simultaneous, opposite states. Apparently, we have a love/hate relationship with sublimation as a cultural ideal.

catttt2. Does "the signs

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