Imagining Money

I've been casually following the course Imagining Money on the Amimetobios podcast. It consists of 13 themed weeks:

WEEK 1: THE VALUE OF MONEY

WEEK 2: MONEY AS CRYPTO-ALLEGORY

WEEK 3: UNNATURAL VALUES: INTEREST AND GIFT-GIVING

WEEK 4: UNNATURAL VALUES: INTEREST AND GIFT-GIVING II

WEEK 5: THE INVISIBLE HAND

WEEK 6: DEFOE, ROXANA

WEEK 7: COMMODITIES, FICTIONAL VALUES AND GAMBLING

WEEK 8: MARKETS, GAMBLING, MONEY AS MAGUFFIN

WEEK 9: COMMODITY FETISHISM

WEEK 10: FINANCE AS LIFE

WEEK 11: MONEY AS MAGUFFIN II: HYPERBOLIC DISCOUNTING

WEEK 12: THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF MONEY 

WEEK 13: NEW MONEY AND OLD CONCEITS 

Since the announcement of the course I planned on following it carefully, reading all of the texts, and making my own observations on my readings. I hope to begin doing that now. Anyone following this blog is more than welcome to follow along and post their own comments. The readings for week 1 are as follows:

Week 1) The Value of Money

Introduction.  Exeter Riddles 9 and 95;

Aristotle, PoliticsI, 8-10

handouts by Philip Larkin, Kay Ryan,  and George Herbert (“Avarice”)

Ambrose Bierce (Devil’s Dictionarydefinitions of money and wealth)

Yasunari Kawabata, “At the Pawnshop” (Latte)

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XI, 85-145, (Golding Translation)

Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 674-751, VIII, 1-178

There are links to many of these texts on the amimetobios page under the appropriate course week.

https://amimetobios.podbean.com/e/imagining-money-literature-and-economics-1-16-19/

Reading Log--book 1.1--The Book of Dust

I finished reading the first volume of Philip Pullman's new trilogy, the Book of Dust, last night. The second half of the book is concerned with what we learn to call "the Secret Commonwealth." I can only speculate how Pullman will develop this concept, but from what we are given I can sense that it is more than enough to justify a new series. In the same way that Lynch was able to recreate Twin Peaks Pullman is now recreating His Dark Materials. If the theme and structuring motif of the last series was Paradise Lost then the new series' is The Faerie Queene. Personally, I am very excited with this turn of direction since I've always preferred Spenser to Milton. The change of theme also begins to justify Pullman's decision to mesh this story through the old (it occurs before, during, and after the original books).  I'd like to say something about what I think Pullman is up to.

Pullman, in titling the series "The Book of Dust" suggested to me, years ago when he still in the earliest phases of conceiving this new material, that he was creating a kind of ur-text. Dust is the grounding metaphor as it were for the whole series. What could the book look like? I almost expected a kind of Bible or Encyclopedia. What we are given instead is "the Secret Commonwealth," another reality that seems separate from the alternate worlds of the previous series. This is a world of magic and seems to embody imagination and creativity as well as being a metaphor for spirit and consciousness. By separating the book over three different time periods he will make the whole of the trilogy more about this theme than any individual character, or so I think, although Lyra too is a kind of spirit that is present in all of them. In short order, I loved it.

Next on the bookshelf, the Businessman by Thomas M. Disch.