This paper is about how substance does (not) pass in short stories (especially online) which condemn the garden gnome to death. These (non-)passages highlight different processes of profanation that aims at material resubstantialisation. They are multidimensional : passage of the object through history and across the land, passage of the individual towards his emancipation, passage of the dwarf to the state of a giant. Following the example of “heritagization”, this process of resubstantialisation allows people to assert their identity and their filiation. In the opposite case, and it’s perhaps what discredits the industrialized object as heritage, this affirmation passes by a stage of liberation.