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so that the souvenir and the collection should rather be seen as two overlapping
aspects or perspectives.
Affective value is primary for all these forms of saving and collecting. Affective
values are personal, even when attached to mass-produced things such as records,
books or clothes. 19 An item’s affectionate value cannot be communicated or shared
in the same way as other kinds of use and exchange values. Benjamin touches on this
aspect when he remarks that ‘the phenomenon of collecting loses its meaning as it
loses its personal owner.’ 20 A collection may be transferred from one person to
another, but not its affective value. This is as true for the souvenir as for the collec-
tion. Because the affective value is personal, these objects or goods can be withdrawn
from economic as well as symbolic and practical exchange. The tangible things them-
selves may of course be exchanged, books may be given as gifts or photographs
exchanged, but not the affections they hold in terms of memories, associations or
familiarity. The new recipient/consumer may also have affections for the object, but
these too are personal and individual. A person who acquires a collection may have
as strong an emotional attachment to it as the prior owner, but this only means that
one affective value is replaced by another.
Contrary to an exchange value or a use value, an affective value cannot be trans-
21
ferred from one person to another; hence, it can be neither bought nor sold. In this
respect, collecting in many instances bears the mark of what Bourdieu designates as
an inverted economy, which allows for symbolic profit but is based on a denial of or
a disinterest in the economic in the narrow sense, and a refusal of commercial inter-
ests. 22 The inverted economy of collectors prioritizes the affective value of things
rather than their potential to accumulate symbolic profit. The affective value of
things is personal and in this sense withdrawn from economic as well as symbolic and
practical exchange. The tangible things themselves may of course be exchanged, but
not the affections they hold for certain people in terms of memories, associations or
familiarity.
As a practice, collecting affects every stage in the process of consumption, from the
acquisition to the disposal of an object, although not in a uniform way for all kinds
of collectors. Benjamin speaks of a ‘shudder of being acquired’ that runs through an
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item when it is enclosed within a ‘magic circle’ by a collector. This shudder points
to the affective side of collecting, which manifests itself not only in a collector’s acqui-
sitions, but also in the possession and care of the items that make up the set of things
demarcated as his or her collection. Often, but far from always, collectors also remove
the items comprising a collection from their normal use. Contrary to Benjamin’s view
on ‘the bibliophile as the only type of collector who has not completely withdrawn
his treasures from their functional context’, put forward in the 1930s, most contem-
porary collectors of records and films do use their beloved items in a functional way,
that is, they play and listen to their records and view their films. 24 This again indi-
cates that Stewart’s dichotomy of souvenir and collection is untenable. However,
there are many collectors of stamps, comic books or pictures of celebrities who
completely withdraw their items from their intended or conventional functional uses

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