Abstract

Jewellery is both economically and affectively a highly invested category of artefact. Diamonds ‐ which became the favoured gem‐stones in European societies from the late seventeenth century ‐offer a historical index of value in relation to the consumption of luxuries. At the same time, they are embedded in myth in ways that lend the circulation, exchange and wearing of diamonds very particular resonances. As minerals, once cut and polished, diamonds attract the eye and thus serve as a metaphor for the gaze in Lacanian psychoanalysis. This paper brings together questions concerning visuality as a historically specific experience in the early modern period and issues of what is meant by consumption as a process that is not only economic and social but also psychic.