Objects do not merely signify memory; they activate it. Beyond their symbolic or representational value, certain everyday objects function as mnemonic tokens—material entities that mediate access to lived experience, enabling memory to be re-entered, reactivated, and re-narrated through embodied encounter.¹ This essay proposes a theoretical distinction between objects as symbols and objects as tokens, arguing that the latter operate not as abstract representations but as material triggers that structure identity, memory, and self-understanding across time.²

In dominant cultural and anthropological discourse, objects are frequently treated as symbols: carriers of meaning that stand in for ideas, values, or historical moments.³ Symbolic interpretation presumes a distance between object and subject, where meaning is decoded through semiotic or cultural frameworks. However, this model is insufficient to account for the lived, affective, and involuntary dimensions of memory that objects often provoke. A childhood photograph, a worn key, a piece of clothing, or a mundane utensil may trigger a cascade of sensations, emotions, and narratives that exceed conscious interpretation. In such cases, the object does not represent memory; it opens it.

This distinction aligns with phenomenological accounts of embodied memory, where recollection is not stored as abstract data but emerges through sensory and material engagement.¹ Memory is not retrieved from an internal archive; it is activated through contact with the world. Objects, in this sense, function as interfaces between temporal layers of the self. They allow past experiences to re-enter the present not as static recollections, but as lived reconfigurations of meaning.

The concept of the object as token emphasizes operation over representation. A token is not defined by what it signifies, but by what it does.² It enables access, authorizes passage, and initiates a process. In mnemonic terms, the object-token acts as a key that unlocks memory through touch, sight, smell, or spatial proximity. This activation is often non-linear and non-verbal, revealing memory as fragmented, affective, and situated rather than coherent or archival.⁴

Crucially, this process is reciprocal. Objects do not merely hold memories; they participate in shaping identity.³ Through repeated interaction, they stabilize certain narratives of the self while allowing others to fade. In contexts of displacement, loss, migration, or trauma, objects may become primary anchors of continuity, functioning as portable territories of identity. What is remembered is not only what happened, but what is materially accessible to be remembered.

This perspective challenges extractive or archival approaches to memory that prioritize documentation over experience. Treating objects as tokens requires attention to context, consent, and relational ethics.⁵ The meaning of an object cannot be detached from the subject who activates it. Memory is not embedded in the object; it is co-produced through encounter. The object does not speak on its own—it responds when addressed.

Within an archaeological framework, this implies a shift from excavation to attention. Rather than uncovering hidden layers beneath the surface, an archaeology of the self attends to what is already present and operative.⁶ The surface—worn, handled, carried—becomes the site where time accumulates. Objects are not residues of the past but active participants in the present, continually renegotiating the boundaries between what was, what is, and what persists.

Understanding objects as mnemonic tokens expands the role of material culture in contemporary artistic and cultural research. It positions everyday objects as agents of memory work, capable of activating reflection, narration, and transformation. In doing so, it reframes identity not as a fixed essence but as an ongoing process mediated through material encounters. What we keep does not merely remind us of who we were; it participates in who we continue to become.

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 1962); Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (New York: Zone Books, 1988 [1911]).
2. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
3. Daniel Miller, Stuff (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010).
4. Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
5. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988).
6. Shannon Dawdy, Patina: A Profane Archaeology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).