http://organelle.org/dolls/dolls.html

“The experiential relationship with a ‘departed member’ (or virtue) through the hypostatic vehicle of a corpse or doll is an emotional transaction with an entity in an invisible universe. This is the most likely basis of ‘re-membering’ — which in turn, is the basis of human knowledge systems. But how and why was this strange universe originally established?

A variety of serious problems emerge from the character of the largely unexamined methods we use to represent experience and knowledge to ourselves and others. One of them results in humans tending and replicating dolls (ideas and objects representing ideas) of various kinds instead of each other and our living world. Another causes us to attack ourselves and the living world in order to convert them into tangible and psychological objects or ‘tokens’ (and their upkeep requirements).

But perhaps these first two related problems emerge from a third: in our rush to create tags with which to ‘remind’ ourselves of things, beings and circumstances — direct contact with the referents these reminders point to is often intentionally sacrificed, or permanently lost.

This leads to further doll production; a desperate attempt to recover the feelings and experiences that disappeared shortly after we acquired the tokens we would use to represent them.”