Silence Is Gold: Some Preliminary Notes on Money, Speech and Calculation

The paper will address the traditional relationship between money and speech, in view of the fact that the empire of calculation constitutes a threat for both. The possibility of an unconditional calculation of everything threatens the relationship that money and speech have with nought, and so it menaces also the very root of their relationship. What is at stake with money and language is seemingly what we call communication. But what do money and language, in their very operation, put in common? Is it only the things exchanged or, more profoundly, the sense of exchange itself? Aristotle says that in the polis, citizens put words and deeds in common. Communication is then a political dimension. Reduced to means of communication, money and speech can legitimately appear as objects of a calculation. The main impolitic characteristic of this calculation –which is in fact a logic reduced to mere logistics–is, however, the fact that it demands to be accomplished as a total calculation, i.e. as a calculation capable of calculating its own conditions of possibility.