Cold Cash: The Fantasy of Real Money
43 Pages Posted: 20 Mar 2012 Last revised: 1 Oct 2012
Date Written: March 19, 2012
Abstract
Cyberspace, it is claimed, has engendered “virtual” realities-artificial worlds where identity is infinitely fluid, where, in the words of a famous New Yorker cartoon “nobody knows you’re a dog.” Since money supposedly makes the world go round, inevitably this in turn spawned talk about virtual money.
Reactions to virtual reality range from hopes for a freedom to be achieved by breaking social chains to fears of an anomie to be suffered by severing social links. Similarly, the anticipated development of virtual money is viewed variously as a progressive force heralding a brave new world or a corrupting serpent invading the cyber-garden. These two perspectives, however, share a single, unspoken presumption that there is a “real” money to which virtual money is to be contrasted.
Virtual reality is not new, however. Over fifty years ago Jacques Lacan argued that all social reality – what he called the symbolic order – is virtual in a technical sense of the term. As social subjects, we live in a society that is artificial – a human creation – albeit one that is subject to natural limitations.
From this perspective, the internet “just” makes virtuality more apparent. The development of virtual currency masks the fact that all money is virtual – an artificial, contingent, social convention. It is then not surprising that there is a third reaction to virtual money – movements to create or recreate a form of money that is more real than modern money.
This article raises some questions about the concept of money. I introduce a speculative account of money and markets and analyze two antithetical recent attempts to replace unsatisfactory, artificial, modern money with a seemingly more real form: the local currency and the anonymous electronic money movements.
Keywords: currency, money, Lacan, virtual reality
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