Ute Tellmann presents a working paper on 'Beyond Performativity – New Materialism and Money’s Futures'

In this paper, I argue that the performativitiy-thesis as it is used in the social study of finance has not capitalized to a full extend on the promise of “new materialism” since it does not fully leave behind what has been critiqued as the representational gaze. The symptom for this incomplete overcoming is the danger of reducing finance to questions of knowledge without an adequate understanding of the ‘monetary matter’ they study. The materialism that it addresses is that of the world of the “formula” and where it thrives; but it has difficulties reaching beyond “seeing like” the financial markets or “economics” it studies. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the capacities for analysis and critique of money and finance would be greatly enhanced if we link the approach of performativity to a broader ontology of money and the economic that I would like to call material temporality. Putting it upfront, I seek to develop an understanding of money and matter in terms of overlapping, divergent and yet connected material temporalities with their own durations. Within such “ontology” it becomes possible to understand the performative effects of “calculative devices” in a broader way. I will show that a “new materialism” of money can be garnered from a combined reading of the economist John Maynard Keynes and the philosopher Henri Bergson.