Customer Reviews

The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property

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Throughout my SOCS - 411 course, the discussion always turned to money as if it were the only indication of professionalism. Mr. Hyde's book provided me with an alternative and suggested further study into the concept of professionalism.

Most illuminating for me and my project was the discussion of the gift within the scientific community. Hyde describes scientific communities as dependent on gifts for the expansion of scientific knowledge. A scientist's independent research is given and shared with their respective community in order to develop the community's collective mind. Instances where scientists pursue their research for financial gain often result in a ruined reputation for that scientist with subsequent exclusion from their scientific community.

Within Hyde's discussion of scientific communities, I searched for a correlation with gift giving in artistic communities. The conclusion that I have arrived at is that art is only important so long as it helps to understand our collective existence.

A wonderful book.

The first essay in this compilation of three is one of those pieces that can potentially change a person's life. Any student of the social sciences becomes aware that there are many important exchanges made in society which are not and cannot be valued in market transactions. Hyde offers a thoughtful analysis of the social function of goods and services exchanged outside the structure of the market. These arguments are essential as a counterbalance to the positivism expressed in most economic thought today.

A good deal of the material from which Hyde draws can be found in Marcel Mauss's book, also called in English, *The Gift* (Essai sur le don). Anybody who has loved Hyde's book will want to read Mauss's as well.

Years ago there was a reader comment in Harper's Magazine to the effect that the spirit of a place is a residue of emotions from the person who cared for it. Examples were the backseat of a taxicab and a favorite aunt's guest bedroom. Imagine the one, a robotic garage worker, mindlessly vacuuming and swabbing, and now Aunt Sally in a sunny kitchen starching linens and putting flowers in a vase.

The reader was attempting to pinpoint a distinction of spirit that we recognize but can't define. Lewis Hyde confronts this problem as he tries to explain the difference between schlock and art. It is the dilemma that so vexed Potter Stewart as he tried to define pornography-"I know it when I see it, but I can't say what it is." Like Potter Stewart, Hyde can give examples, but no explanation. Hyde, however, is too game for surrender in the face of the ineffable.

Hyde starts with a hypothesis: Art acquires a spiritual quality that comes from a giving heart, And a corollary: The spiritual quality of art is lost if disrespected by the recipient. Hyde hypothesizes that the artist, recipient of an unearned talent from a giving god, must share it in turn with a giving heart. (Does this mean art cannot be sold? Oops, we're getting ahead ... .)

In seven chapters, two questions predominate: What is the spiritual quality that differentiates gifts from non-gifts ("commodities" in Hyde's parlance)? And, what is the nature of the disrespect that will so profane the gift as to nullify it? Here are some of his suggestions.

Gifts are not-as some suppose-without strings. (Forget flowers or a 'thank you' to Aunt Sally, you'll see.) Rather, gifts and commodities differ because gifts are ambiguous and variable as to value. First, gifts and their reciprocals may not be equivalent in price, but it is bad manners to compare. (One does not "look a gift horse in the mouth." Right? "It is the thought that counts." Right? See, you already know this stuff.) And second, although the price of a gift may be low, the "thought that counts" (the spirit of the gift) causes a gift to increase in value as it is passed along. Aunt Sally gives you a frayed scrap of lace your grandmother and she both wore at their weddings. It is tattered, yet, from one generation to the next, each exchange has enhanced its value. Later, you send fudge to Aunt Sally. She invites friends to share and brags about your thoughtfulness. Lousy stale resort fudge, it may be awful, but it is bad manners to say so. It is the fact that these tokens came as gifts that gives them value.

Ambiguity and variability mean gifts, literally, do "keep on giving". In a commodity exchange, I trade corn, you trade tomatoes, we agree on equivalent values, we exchange, we are quit. In a gift exchange inequivalencies of price together with increases in value leave a residuum, an indefiniteness of obligation that binds both parties to future transactions. We have not balanced our account; we are not quit. We have a continuing duty to make future exchanges to extend the longer-term relationship.

Reciprocity creates gift circles. Where the circle is greater than two, a gift to one is a proxy gift to all. Thus, when Aunt Sally invites you to stay, she may not think her son will one day come stay with you, but when he does, your gift to him is a reciprocal gift to Aunt Sally as well. Every gift enhances the bonds with all whom we perceive to be within the circle.

Disrespect of a gift weakens our sense of community with the one who disrespects it. This is true on the level of mundane-when Uncle Henry skips family Christmas for a cruise with country club friends-and the sublime-when we perceive that others devalue divine gifts. For instance, why is society uncomfortable with sales of kidneys? Why is society uncomfortable with slavery? Do sales of people and parts profane what others believe to be a gift? Why is post-modern society so uncomfortable with pornography and prostitution? Does commercialization profane something that many believe is a gift between partners? Why are emotions so high in the debates on abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty? Do the objectors believe these actions profane a gift?

Hyde uses the themes from the first seven chapters to devise a theory of literary criticism that he applies to Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound. Like some of the other reviewers, I did not feel that the theory's application was as engaging as its development. It seems to work better with Whitman. This is in part because Whitman's effusive spirituality lends itself to discussions of the artist as medium, but I may also be influenced by the fact that I am stingier with appreciation of Pound. Hyde, himself, admits that by the time he has completed his proofs he is no longer as convinced of his premise as he was at the outset. He acknowledges that art may be sold in some circumstances and does not always become profaned thereby.

Though the theory's application is perhaps not successful in the way Hyde hoped it would be, still, the book is a stunning work. It succeeds in so many ways that a copy (with marginal notes) resides permanently on the topmost select shelf in my non-lending library. I keep copies on hand to give to friends.

Frankly, first time through, this book was difficult. Hyde is a poet, first and after all, and each paragraph is dense with meaning, so I read it in small bites with careful digestion in between. He uses words ('erotic' and 'copulative' come to mind) in ways that are so far removed from modern usage as to be confusing at first. But take the time; make the effort. This book is a gift to all of us. It would be churlish not to appreciate it.

In the excerpt we are immediately asked to imagine a scene where a boorish colonist mistakes an Indian loan for an Indian gift. In the scene it is noted that when the Englishman receives this gift he immediately says to himself, "What a nice thing to send back to the British Museum!". When the Indians later demand to know where their gift is, the Englishman is so astounded they would voice this demand he invented the term, "Indian giver" to ridicule it. We are then given the author's definition of gift as a gift that keeps on giving.. i.e. the gift doesn't stop with the receiver but must be passed on to keep it true; "whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again, not kept." Except we learn in the next paragraph that actually the material gift is not important if it is replaced with another gift of equal or greater value. He even goes on to state that the gift need not be returned to the original donor but can be passed along to another member of society. Well, isn't that what the Englishman intended to do upon first receiving it? What we are actually witnessing is a clash of presuppostions based on two parties coming from completely different methodolgies of trade and social discourse. What gifting is to the Englishman is always an expression of gratitude or good will with no strings attached. What gifting is to the barter-centered Indian is the exact opposite.

The Indians were not giving anything away but their trust. Under a barter economy transactions are conducted in goods with gifts given as a prelude to NEGOTIATION. The Indians were not being generous with their goods but were instead being generous with their credit! Under a barter economy how do you suppose a new-comer would be greeted? Remember there is no currency, only capital. Well, if you are a savvy trader you will attempt to determine your new neighbor's credit worthiness by offering something of value and then waiting for the return. If the object itself is returned it means the newcomer is relatively poor and has nothing of equal value. If something of relatively equal value is returned then a certain equity can be assumed. If something of greater value is returned then the tables have been turned and negotiations can continue untill all parties are comfortable with each other, i.e. each has gotten to know one another via this custom. The fact is, under this system nothing is given freely. It is understood by all that this is all negotiation. Polite negotiation. The Englishman walks into this world from a completely different background. His economy is revolving not around constant negotiation with everybody he meets. Things are much more regulated. The art of negotiation is lost on him.

The Englishman's immediate desire to give the pipe to a museum completely undermines the author's contention that the Englishman wanted to keep it for himself. The Englishman actually is more in tune with the author's description of a gift than the Indians. What actually is happening here is the exact opposite of what the author wants us to believe. The Englishman will give the gift to a British museum where he will in effect be circulating this gift throughout the world. The Indians want it back or something back to communicate to them the newcomers relative wealth and hence further credit worthiness. It can be assumed that the Englishman is also working under similar ideologies but under a more protracted and sophisticated methology. He is giving to a museum from which he has taken in the past free of charge. He is returning to the museum an obligation he feels which is the same obligation the author is describing as existing only in the Indian world. But wait a second. It seems that this exchange is simply a protracted settling of accounts between the colonist and the museum. It is the same settling of accounts the Indians expected but to which the Englishman simply transferred to his own set of books which actually preffered to assume all gifts were eventually to be repaid without ever the contention that it would be otherwise. The Indians simply had a much more LOCAL and IMMEDIATE need for retribution. The term "Indian giver" can be seen an accurate description of a type of gift that contains an immediate retribution. As opposed to gifts within a monied economy where barter has been replaced with retail, gifting has simply become less important as a means of character assessment. In a monied economy, the entire barter system is replaced with a much more convenient marketplace. The disparity between the two views of gifts has nothing to do with framing the colonists or the Indians as being more or less generous but instead has everything to do with simple misunderstanding. Misunderstanding that may have been reconcilable if the colonists had not been so eager to view the Indian as anything more than savage.

I would rank this book in the 10 most important I have read. His study of Gift giving throughout history and with different cultures changed my entire view of how we give and receive gifts.

A colleague, influenced by reading this book years ago, posted a recommendation, and as I am interested in the Sociology of Art and being a for-profit composer, I thought it might be pertinent.

Unfortunately, this book reminds me of that old joke, that there are two kinds of people in this world - those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world, and those who don't.

In his general criticism of the limits of Capitalism, Mr. Hyde says things that will warm the hearts of any liberal. For example, "There is a place for volunteer labor, for mutual aid, for in-house work, for healings that require sympathetic contact or a cohesive support group, for strengthening the bonds of kinship, for intellectual community, for creative idleness, for the slow maturation of talent, for the creation and preservation and dissemination of culture, and so on." It's a great sentence, and deserves mulling. Compare that with this later nonsense: "We have, on the one hand, imagination, synthetic thought, gift exchange, use value, and gift-increase, all of which are linked by a common element of eros, or relationship, binding, 'shaping into one.' And we have, on the other hand, analytic or dialectical thought, self-reflection, logic, market exchange, exchange value, and interest on loans, all of which share a touch of logos, of differentiating into parts."

Must Mr. Hyde equivalence everything? Must everything that the marketplace has difficulty in valuing be called a "gift"? Must the world be broken into Capitalism and gifts? How about Capitalism and lots of things not covered by Capitalism? And he definitely needs to read some Buber.

As a poet, Mr. Hyde should understand the difference between saying that a person is "gifted"; i.e., has received a gift FROM GOD, and whether the work done is a "gift" to others. It's as if the entire first half of his book is based around a coincidental quirk of colloquial English - definition one and two in the dictionary.

It's a shame, because in the last three chapters, Hyde writes about what he really wants to: Whitman's homosexuality, and Pound's politics. Unfortunately, Hyde confuses his approval of the former (which led to the care of Civil War casualties) and condemnation of the latter (which led to anti-Semitic tirades) with judgements of the worth of each's poetry during these times. It's a weak thesis, and bears little relation to all the "gift" theory in the beginning, which suffers from the same Jungian equivalence syndrome (all fairy tales are the same, blah, blah, blah).

And then, in the last chapter, he throws away the theory and writes a conclusion which is observant, in its way.

So there's much good in this book, but it's mixed in with so much bad (the soul, spirit, greatness - the usual hack work), that it's not worth a thorough read. And he completely ignores Warhol, conceptualism, performance art - all kinds of recent challenges to the old theory of "art" that in 1979-83 he should have been fully aware of.

I read this book on the recommendation of a dear friend of mine, and after reading it i can understand why she recommended it. This philosophic and poetic book deals with a very important facet of human lives and societies that is all too often overlooked in economic analyis, namely the act of giving where no market is involved. This book is not your usual and often too facile critique of the market economy. The latter gets its proper due but not only in a negative sense; after all, market economic systems generate goods and choices in a particular area of scarcity in more efficient ways than tried out on other systems. Yes, it is certainly true, as the author points out, that the social act and economics of the commodity exchange is something else entirely than the social act of giving outside of the market economy, and both the analyis and implications in the book make that deservedly clear. As an economist i found the discussion on usury and the different categories of values that can be atttached to a product very interesting and basic. At the same time, I had not yet encountered such an interesting discussion on the act of giving as part of a society and the linkages with a commodity producing market economy. And as a person taking part of society I found the discussion on the creative act of giving and the trace of social bonds this engenders inspiring on a personal level as well. The writer here mixes analysis with what is for me enlightening poetic language, and the role of the artist here is also well put. As other reviewers, I found the first part very interesting while the further discussion on Whitman and Pound was harder going. Although certainly not always an easy read as a scholarly study, I can certainly recommend this unusual book on the abundance and generosity of spirit that living in society can bring, as a conscious act with magic of inspiration.

The first seven chapters of this book are great. After reading them, I realized a number of things that I had never even considered before. The remaining three chapters (with extensive discussion of Ezra Pound and Walt Whitman) were not nearly as interesting or helpful to me. Nevertheless, the beginning of the book makes it more than worth reading.

The other reviewers have captured the essence of THE GIFT -- itself a gift, from the author to his readers. It has not lost any relevance since its first appearance in 1977: gifting is still the most important type of transaction, more fundamental than marketplace selling and buying.

I'm beginning a book on the gift economy. THE GIFT is my foundation. It boosts me easily into the stratosphere, so strong is Hyde's presentation. Thank you, Lewis.

I read this more than five years ago. It is scholarly but well written. When I finished it, I wondered how practical it would be. In the last five years, I have thought about it several times. I cannot say that about 90% of the books I have read.

I believe it is a good example of "history of ideas" literature. It is a deconstruction of the notion of economics and commerce. By focusing on the narrow subject of gift giving, it opens the window to a critical understanding of common ideas like "interest," "usury," and "economic community." After all, what makes up a global economy? How do people bind themselves to "beliefs" that enable cooperation.

The book is not prescriptive. Instead, it is provocative to the extent that it challenges assumptions. I recommend it to the reader who is looking for an intellectual escape into the historically possible.