Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the relationship of the tower to person, through an Eiffel Tower key ring and will examine the fluid multiple narratives of the Tower through the materialization of experience,in relation to loss and longing, particularly when the souvenir is lost and refound.

Paper long abstract:

Making the Eiffel Tower Mine:

This paper explores the way in which memory defines the action of the souvenir, creating an enduring and complex connection between place, time and the possessor. It will explore the changing relationship between the souvenir, and the souvenir experience, with specific reference to the Eiffel Tower (Barthes,1997). Souvenirs enshrine, feeling, emotion, narrative, status, longing, loss, history, representation, stereotypes, cultural distortions (Appadurai, 1986) and have no use value (Baudrillard, 2005), however, the function of the narrative in the souvenir is so strong that the souvenir, without it, does not exist. This Narrative of Origins (Stewart, 2007), has the power to miniaturize monuments, capture cultural emblems, and to fix the past in the present.

Through using the tourist experience of the Eiffel Tower, this paper will examine the relationship of the tower to person, place and souvenir. Using an Eiffel Tower key ring it will examine the fluid multiple narratives of the Tower through the materialization of experience and narrative in relation to loss and longing and will discuss what happens when the souvenir is also lost. It will argue that the process of loss adds to the narrative of the object through a souvenir moment (Proust, 2006; Grennan, 2015), which could be described as a virtual platform of remembrance. It will also consider the nature of traces as the key ring, once lost, re locates itself in the narrative of the lost, until it is found.