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Money, Time and Death...

...to accompany ‘The Four Seasons’ video sequence.

A commentary on four short, and as yet unmade, films...

The main theme of the video sequence is that much that we regard as ‘Nature’ is in fact Culture. ‘Spring’ deals with this issue head on regarding our environment, and what we usually regard as ‘Nature’ (like the changes in plant life that signal and indeed symbolize, ‘the four seasons’) and the accompanying concept, which is a statement -actually an assertion- of belief, of ‘what is natural’. ‘Summer’ then follows with ‘Time’, ‘Autumn’ with ‘Money’, and ‘Winter’, appropriately enough, with ‘Death’. The essay below examines the cultural construction of these ‘things’ from their performative aspect, the fact that their ‘existence’ is based upon our, largely unconscious, even ritual, agreement (I begin with ‘Money’ as the most obvious social construct of the three…).

Money, time (and death) as social fictions and cultural performatives… as culture and not nature.

Money is it (a) performative? The ‘said’, (symbol asserted, vocal action, gestural action) becomes ‘the thing’, the state, the action, saying and desired end; pronouncement and result are identical – as in the marriage rite and including verbal or gestural threats as a ‘promise’… (in marriage we promise to take on a role apposite to an identity, the promise works as a kind of debt, here a mutual debt, also a mutual gift or sacrifice - that is, a form of ‘gift exchange’). Regarding money: money too ‘promises’, is a ‘promissory note’; a symbol taken as, used as, a thing of intrinsic wealth – but its wealth is extrinsic, it is a symbol representing wealth. Other objects’ wealth too is extrinsic in the sense that a given culture values different things: but money – once not gold or silver or a number of chickens – is a symbol, as in paper or sea shells). There needs to be an agreement; social, cultural, as to what is, how much is ‘value added’ to, ‘or ‘the value of’, an agreed object: then this value is represented by a symbol – an object chosen as the means of exchange. This process is always a collective performative with a cultural context (appropriate role play, as in, who has the right to say what is valuable, from the seller to the buyer, to the State). So social agreement, cultural custom, guarantees assertion (identity, repetition in the present) or promise (identity, repetition in the future)… In both cases the assertion or promise contains ritual elements: ‘Say “I promise”… ‘, or ‘I do…’ (repetition of a cultural ritual containing a clear performative and –a change of - identity). In both cases putting oneself into debt (as gift/sacrifice commits one to a course of action and to a group identity as well as an individual identity or role), we have to live up to our claims… The promissory note type of money is guaranteed by the state or a bank: but what if we don’t trust the giver… as in, suspect a forgery…? In this sense the giver (of a note) makes a promise too (‘this note is real, I believe’). ‘Money’ is thus both a necessary social fiction and a persistent performative. In both cases partaking of the rituality which underwrites much of human identity and activity, that is - human culture.

So what of ‘time’ - our other, even more ever-present, custom? If value is actualised in money, then time is actualised in clocks… Clock Time. Certainly ‘it’ provides the agreed frame within which we may report, promise or assert identity or action. Any individual or social, assertive or promissive gesture, bearing on the ‘now moment’ (but aimed onto the future), regarding the state of self and or others or concerning an action, takes place within a ‘unit of time’ – indeed may be taken as a unit ‘of’ time (as when we compare ‘time how long’ and its historical punctuation and delimitation, ‘time when’). Comparison here is of the essence: two processes are compared, if one is abstract, based upon a sequence of measures (seconds , minutes, hours, etc.), then we call this ‘Time’, as in providing ‘the time’, ‘time when’ – if we are ‘timing’ a process or event, the two of these ‘times’ offer ‘time how long’. However there is no such ‘thing’, only a comparison and an agreed measure. Moreover ‘Time’ reified is a performative; it becomes a ‘thing’ when we say so (‘it is half past five’ he said looking at his watch – with the later descriptive detail providing the felicity condition required for the performative to be accepted as such). Social time is in effect a collective performative – the units (of the ‘thing’) we agree to use. Except there is no thing – just the comparison to processes and cycles occurring at different speeds and rhythms, for no natural period is exactly ‘the same’ as its abstract imposed measure: just as no ‘object’ is exactly its stated length or dimension – always more precision is possible, in fact an infinite precision transcending all reality is available (a sign that we are dealing with imaginary, arbitrary or agreed quantities, which then are made to ‘fit’ according to use and desire…). Our temporality (my ‘now moment’) is the ‘place’ where this is actualized (in the present’) – ‘now it is four o’ clock’. So much for experienced time (subjective temporality) and social time (‘objective time’). What of ‘Real Time’? What of the real Object? Well… this probably does not exit ‘as such’ (as an object), rather a collection of process, rhythms and apparent repetitions (cycles, waves) – taken from a human point of view. We are aware of ‘it’ as change; including –importantly- the change that continues in our minds, our continuing restless consciousness (our temporality, present or our ‘now’, which includes its present-ness, and its awareness of change), when no other change is discernable… The real processes of ‘nature’, or better, the movement of matter as described by the physical sciences, have an indirect influence (years, weeks, days, seasons, lunar change, the diurnal cycle, the annual cycle) on the measure we use – even if the measure began as an attempt to record the actual changes so we might record events and quantities (documentary proof, debt, deposit) predict or plan into the future (calendars). For example, in the case of the lunar cycle the event or process in question (the origin of a month, originally a four week cycle) has become completely disassociated from our calendar month – so has no relation to the phases of the moon. However, by contrast, our other important ‘type of time’ or relation to time, the concept of the ‘outside of time’ is a pure or total performative and exists only as an imaginary promise; eternity (‘derived’ from the ‘eternal present’ of our temporal experience) is pure assertion – its ‘guarantee’, its promise (‘it’s Nature’, ‘it’s universal’), pure subjunctive statement or belief – upheld by agreement (or not). The general, the absolute (Other), in effect function as pure performatives. The bridge ‘crossing the void’. The void of ‘now’ and ‘then’; the concrete particular and the ever-absent general; my point of view and everybody elses’. Desire jumping the void - the void of the diremption.

(… and what of death?) ‘Death’ too comes in different forms. The event and our representation and understanding of it may vary considerably. Our own death we famously cannot imagine; at least not without imagining ourselves from the outside as an object or other - but then this is no longer ‘subject death’ or subjectively experienced death (another example of how the diremption allows us to make mental images of otherwise impossible things and events, as we oscillate between where are, our subjective experience, and an external or object point of view, which is imaginary, imagined by us…). When we imagine our own death, we do so as another, that is we imagine other’s dying; from being an ‘other’, a person, or a body containing a mind, we witness it turning into matter only, object only (in our minds this is the reverse process or personification, taking object as other or Animism – one of our oldest ways of thinking, of giving ‘life’ or value – this is where ‘the gods’ come from…). A ‘persons’ body and face stop moving, they become a body or corpse, and when movement or change stops then visible time ‘stops’ too, object or other time stops and we assume subjective temporality stops too, there remains only the process of chemical entropy, of decay – ‘their time has come’. Effectively the ’ghost’ is no longer in ‘the machine’. This situation, when proved by a medical examination and certificate… is demise – the brain and body begin to cease to function (but here also there may be some ambiguity as to when consciousness ceases…). A medical examination and certificate as proof of death is a scientific agreement, an agreement among persons who may make such a pronouncement: a promise that it is the case, a pronouncement, performative: announcing a change of state (identity): ‘I now pronounce you, man and wife’ becomes, ‘I now pronounce him/her/it as dead/deceased’. Conferring, confirming identity or state (in this case alive or not), by means of a special action and pronouncement in a suitable configuration of time and space, by the right person/s – this is the definition of a performative, as also of ritual force or rituality. Again we may read cultural practice (agreed rituals) as a collective performative… ‘Death’ too has its cultural, ritual and so performative aspect.

Our social bonds, it would seem, are held together by an implied promise….