Thanks for this. Render unto ceaser etc haunts any and all worthwhile study of money IMO. I would contest the "of course" and "strictly speaking" in "Money itself is, of course, strictly speaking, debt." This is a common view today in large part due to the late David Graeber's magnificent Debt. But even Graeber himself was not so singular about the nature of money. Tony Lawson makes the point that money cannot ever be 'just debt' because that inherently implies it is also 'credit'. In other words debt and credit are two sides of the same coin :-)
Nevertheless I find broadly theological understandings of money some of the most insightful. Your piece concludes in a similar way to Bataille's Accursed Share... for him it is 'waste' or 'sacrifice' that surrounds the 'restricted economy' of money. And I love Bataille!
Hi Jonathan. Thank you very much. I've not read Bataille, so curious to see what he says. And thanks for your caution on money being both debt and credit at once. I'm reflecting on the implications. The more I think about money the stranger it seems to me.
Yeah. Money is strange stuff. Plus it's woven into the way we perceive the world .. so out view of it reflects it. It was around 2009 when there was a surge theological interest in money (finiancial crises tend to make people think about it). I'd recommend Philip Goodchild and Devin Singh's work esp. Bataille doesn't really tackle money directly in The Accursed Share... But that's definitely the text to consider imo. Obvs it's had a big influence on how I think about what I do with my own money burning rituals and with CoB.
SEE: Robert Cover, "Violence and the Word," 95 YALE LAW JOURNAL 1601 (1986).
"Legal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death. This is true in several senses. Legal interpretive acts signal and occasion the imposition of violence upon others: A judge articulates her understanding of a text, and as a result, somebody loses his freedom, his property, his children, even his life. Interpretations in law also constitute justifications for violence which has already occurred or which is about to occur. When interpreters have finished their work, they frequently leave behind victims whose lives have been torn apart by these organized, social practices of violence. Neither legal interpretation nor the violence it occasions may be properly understood apart from one another. This much is obvious, though the growing literature that argues for the centrality of interpretive practices in law blithely ignores it."
Fantástico! Now we just need a painter to get the image of Jesus feeding cesar his own coins. El Greco? The ocre palette would be fitting.
Oh yes, splendid vision!
Thanks for this. Render unto ceaser etc haunts any and all worthwhile study of money IMO. I would contest the "of course" and "strictly speaking" in "Money itself is, of course, strictly speaking, debt." This is a common view today in large part due to the late David Graeber's magnificent Debt. But even Graeber himself was not so singular about the nature of money. Tony Lawson makes the point that money cannot ever be 'just debt' because that inherently implies it is also 'credit'. In other words debt and credit are two sides of the same coin :-)
Nevertheless I find broadly theological understandings of money some of the most insightful. Your piece concludes in a similar way to Bataille's Accursed Share... for him it is 'waste' or 'sacrifice' that surrounds the 'restricted economy' of money. And I love Bataille!
Thanks again.
Hi Jonathan. Thank you very much. I've not read Bataille, so curious to see what he says. And thanks for your caution on money being both debt and credit at once. I'm reflecting on the implications. The more I think about money the stranger it seems to me.
Yeah. Money is strange stuff. Plus it's woven into the way we perceive the world .. so out view of it reflects it. It was around 2009 when there was a surge theological interest in money (finiancial crises tend to make people think about it). I'd recommend Philip Goodchild and Devin Singh's work esp. Bataille doesn't really tackle money directly in The Accursed Share... But that's definitely the text to consider imo. Obvs it's had a big influence on how I think about what I do with my own money burning rituals and with CoB.
"all laws hang on the guarantee of violence."
SEE: Robert Cover, "Violence and the Word," 95 YALE LAW JOURNAL 1601 (1986).
"Legal interpretation takes place in a field of pain and death. This is true in several senses. Legal interpretive acts signal and occasion the imposition of violence upon others: A judge articulates her understanding of a text, and as a result, somebody loses his freedom, his property, his children, even his life. Interpretations in law also constitute justifications for violence which has already occurred or which is about to occur. When interpreters have finished their work, they frequently leave behind victims whose lives have been torn apart by these organized, social practices of violence. Neither legal interpretation nor the violence it occasions may be properly understood apart from one another. This much is obvious, though the growing literature that argues for the centrality of interpretive practices in law blithely ignores it."