Coining Reason: A Discussion Series

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist…. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.
—John Maynard Keynes

Disciplinary boundaries allow counterevidence to belong to someone else’s story. Reasonable enough. But such arguments are a way of avoiding the awkward truth that if certain constellations of facts are able to enter scholarly consciousness deeply enough, they threaten not only the venerable narratives, but also the entrenched academic disciplines that (re)produce them.
—Susan Buck-Morss

It is the framework which changes with each new technology and not just the picture within the frame.
—Marshall McLuhan

About

The Coining Reason weekly discussion series explores ideas related to Web 3 through a set of texts within particular subject areas. The breadth of the selected subject areas, far from undisciplined indulgence, reflects an urgent necessity: financialization means practically all aspects of life are now subsumed by the rule and roil of coin, so that any single disciplinary approach is apt to miss or misrecognize those “constellations of facts” that index more potent realities. A Roadmap of these subject areas (called “Units”), with potential reading lists for each, is included below. Because of the varied depth and extensibility of these Units, Coining Reason’s participants will ultimately help determine the pace, scale, and scope of these investigations.

The Schedule will be updated weekly to show the selected readings. Note the first session, “Session 0. Cypherpunks,” has already been set. Readings not published online will be made available on the Neta DAO Discord.

Current Schedule

Unit 2: Money

Before all the talk of “Web 3,” there was Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is as much an intervention in digital technology as it is in monetary theory. In this Unit, we will present histories and theories of the “money” concept, as well as strive to ascertain a relation between money and surplus value. The economic problem of surplus value will be brought into connection with human nature’s surplus of virtuality as explored in Unit I.

Session 2.12: Money is Sad Shit (21 August 2024)

• Norman O. Brown, “Filthy Lucre,” from Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Click Here)

• Optional: John Forrester, “Gift, Money, and Debt,” from Truth Games: Lies, Money, and Psychoanalysis (Click Here)

Planned Sessions

Session 2.13–The Technology of Trust

• Christine Desan, “Money’s Design Elements: Debt, Liquidity, and the Pledge of Value from Medieval Coin to Modern ‘Repo’,” from Banking and Finance Law Review (Click Here)

• Jens Beckert, “Trust and the Performative Construction of Markets,” from Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Discussion Papers (Click Here)

• Jacques Lacan, Sessions 1 and 2, from Seminar XVI: From an Other to the other (Click Here)

• Edouard Pignot, “Bringing Down the House (of Goldman Sachs): Analyzing Corrupt Forms of Trading with Lacan,” from Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization (Click Here)

Session 2.14–Bitcoin

• Ole Bjerg, “How Is Bitcoin Money?” from Theory, Culture, and Society (Click Here)

• Saifedean Ammous, “Digital Money” and “What Is Bitcoin Good For?” from The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking (Click Here)

• George Gilder, “Money in Information Theory” and “What Bitcoin Can Teach,” from The Scandal of Money: Why Wall Street Recovers but the Economy Never Does (Click Here)

• Lyn Alden, “The Creation of Stateless Money” and “A World of Openness or a World of Control,” from Broken Money: Why Our Financial System is Failing Us and How We Can Make It Better (Click Here and Here)

• Optional: Frances Ferguson, “Bitcoin: A Reader’s Guide (The Beauty of the Very Idea),” from Critical Inquiry (Click Here)

Session 2.15–Money in Crisis

• Kojin Karatani, “On Modes of Exchange” and “Toward a World Republic,” from The Structure of World History (Click Here and Here)

• Werner Bonefeld, “Monetarism and Crisis,” from Global Capitalism, National State and the Politics of Money (eds. Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway) (Click Here)

• Werner Bonefeld, “Notes on Fetishism, History, and Uncertainty: Beyond the Critique of Austerity,” from Notes From Tomorrow: On Reason, Negation, and Certainty (Click Here)

• Optional: Tomaz Fleischman, Paolo Dini, and Giuseppe Littera, “Liquidity-Saving through Obligation-Clearing and Mutual Credit: An Effective Monetary Innovation for SMEs in Times of Crisis,” from Journal of Risk and Financial Management (Click Here)

Session 2.16–Money: The Negative

• Giorgio Agamben, “The Economy of the Moderns,” from The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (Click Here)

• Samo Tomsic, “The Vicious Circle of Labor and Resistance,” from The Labor of Enjoyment: Toward a Critique of Libidinal Economy (Click Here)

• Slavoj Zizek, “Three Fragments on Suicide as a Political Factor,” from Crisis and Critique (Click Here)

Past Sessions

Unit 2: Economics

Session 2.0–Re-Orientation (26 July 2023)

• Optional: Rhea Myers, “Computers and Capital: The Rise of Digital Currency”

Listen to Session 2.0

Session 2.1–Economy (16 August 2023)

• Keith Tribe, “The Word: Economy,” from The Economy of the Word: Language, History, and Economics (Click Here)

• Optional: Sigmund Freud, “The Economic Problem of Masochism,” Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 19 (trans. James Strachey) (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.1

Session 2.2–Byzantine: Icon and Economy (30 August 2023)

• Marie-Jose Mondzain, “A Semantic Study of the Term Economy,” from Image, Icon, Economy: The Byzantine Origins of the Contemporary Imaginary (Click Here)

• Optional: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, “Apparatus of Capture (7000 BC)” from A Thousand Plateaus: Schizophrenia and Capitalism (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.2

Session 2.3—The Song of Money (6 September 2023)

• Massimo Amato, “Silence is Gold: Some Preliminary Notes on Money, Speech and Calculation,” from Money and Calculation: Economic and Sociological Analyses (Click Here)

• Gaspar Feliu, “Money and Currency,” from Money and Coinage in the Middle Ages (ed Rory Naismith) (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.3

Session 2.4–WTF Happened in 1579? (20 September 2023)

• Marie-Therese Boyer-Xambeu, Ghislain Deleplace, and Lucien Gillard, “Money and Society in Sixteenth Century Europe” and “The International Monetary Crisis of the 1570s,” from Private Money and Public Currencies: The Sixteenth Century Challenge (Click Here) and (Here)

Listen to Session 2.4

Session 2.5—Phenomenology of Money (27 September 2023)

• Massimo Amato and Luca Fantacci, “Part I: Phenomenology,” from The End of Finance (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.5

Session 2.6–The Ontology of Money (4 October 2023)

• Mark Peacock, “Part 1: Theories,” from Introducing Money (Click Here)

• Mark Peacock, “The Ontology of Money,” from Cambridge Journal of Economics (Click Here)

• Carry-over from 2.5: Rudi Visker, “Is There Death After Life?” from Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai - Philosophia (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.6

Session 2.7–Money: Paper and Virtual (11 October 2023)

• John Kenneth Galbraith, “Of Paper,” “An Instrument of Revolution,” from Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (Click Here

• Joan Robinson, “The Keynesian Revolution,” from Economic Philosophy (Click Here)

• Edward Castranova, “Weirdly Normal: Virtual Economies and Virtual Money,” from Wildcat Currency: How the Virtual Money Revolution is Transforming the Economy (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.7

Session 2.8: The Birth of Banking (18 October 2023)

• Christine Desan, “Reinventing Money: The Beginning of Bank Currency,” from Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism (Click Here)

• John Kenneth Galbraith, “The Impeccable System,” from Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.8

Session 2.9–Surplus (1 November 2023)

• Karl Marx, “Reflections on Money,” from MECW Vol 10 (Click Here)

• Stefan Eich, “Money as Capital: Karl Marx and the Limits of Monetary Politics,” from The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes (Click Here)

• Rhea Myers, “Why Bitcoin is Money According to Marx,” from Proof of Work: Blockchain Provocations, 2011-2021 (Click Here)

• Optional: Karl Marx, “Theories of Surplus Value,” from Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.9

Session 2.X—Negation (8 November 2023)

• Franco Lo Piparo, “Truth, Negation, and Meaning,” from Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy (Click Here)

• Paolo Virno, “Mirror Neurons and the Faculty of Negation,” from An Essay on Negation: For a Linguistic Anthropology (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.X

Session 2.X, Part 2—The Money of Language (16 November 2023)

• Sigmund Freud, “Negation,” from SE Vol XIX (Click Here)

• Jacques Lacan, “Introduction to Jean Hyppolite’s Commentary on Freud’s ‘Verneinung,’” from Ècrits (Click Here)

• Jean Hyppolite, “A Spoken Commentary on Freud’s ‘Verneinung,’” from Ècrits (Click Here)

• Jacques Lacan, “Response to Jean Hyppolite’s Commentary on Freud’s ‘Verneinung,’” from Ècrits (Click Here)

• Alenka Zupancic, “Hegel and Freud: Between Aufhebung and Verneinung,” from Crisis and Critique (Click Here)

• Paolo Virno, “The Money of Language,” from An Essay on Negation: For A Linguistic Anthropology (Click Here)

• Optional: Raymond Ruyer, “There Is No Subconscious: Embryogenesis and Memory,” from Diogenes (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.X, Part 2

Session 2.10—Psychoanalysis of Money (11 January 2024)

• Jodi Dean, “Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics,” from Cultural Politics (Click Here)

Listen to Session 2.10

Session 2.11: Exchange: Self/Other (24 July 2024)

• Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function,” Ècrits (trans. Bruce Fink)

• Giorgio Agamben, “The Friend,” What Is an Apparatus? and Other Essays (trans.

• SCREENING: Where Is the Friend’s House, dir. Abbas Kiarostami on Neta DAO Meeting

Listen to Session 2.11

Unit 1: The Internet

Session 1.0–Cypherpunk (5 April 2023)

• Eric Hughes, “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto”

• Timothy May, “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto”

• Nick Srnicek, “Trusting the Trustless”

Listen to Sesssion 1.0

Session 1.1–Tele-History (12 April 2023)

• Tom Standage, “The Mother of All Networks” and “Love Over the Wires,” from The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-Line Pioneers (Click Here)

Listen to Session 1.1

Session 1.2–Web 1.0 (19 April 2023)

• Jessa Lingel, “Becoming Craig’s List: San Francisco Roots and the Ethics of Web 1.0” and “Craigslist, the Secondary Marketplace, and Politics of Value,” from An Internet for the People: The Politics and Promise of Craigslist (Click Here)

Listen to Session 1.2

Session 1.3–Freedom and Control Between Web 1 and Web 2 (26 April 2023)

• Wendy Chun, “Why Cyberspace?” from Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (Click Here)

Note: unrecorded

Session 1.4–The World Brain (3 May 2023)

• Charles Petzold, “The World Brain,” from Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (Click Here)

• Justin Smith, “A Sudden Acceleration,” from The Internet is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning (Click Here)

Liaten to Session 1.4, part 1
Listen to Session 1.4, part 2

Session 1.5–Psychoanalyzing Cyberspace (10 May 2023)

• André Nusselder, “The Question Concerning Technology and Desire” and “The Technologization of Human Virtuality,” from Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology (Click Here)

Listen to Session 1.5

Session 1.6–Digital Bodies (24 May 2023)

• Slavoj Zizek, “How Real Is Reality?” from Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (see Neta DAO Discord)

• Clint Burnham, “Is the Internet a Thing?” from Does the Internet Have an Unconscious? Slavoj Zizek and Digital Culture (Click Here)

Liaten to Session 1.6

Session 1.7–Web 3.0

• Joel Monegro, “The Blockchain Application Stack”

• —, “The Shared Data Layer of the Blockchain Application Stack”

• —,”Fat Protocols”

• —, “Thin Applications”

Listen to Session 1.7

Session 1.8–Digital Commons

• Nick Szabo, “Money, Blockchains, and Social Scalability”

• Jameson Lopp, “Who Controls Bitcoin Core?”

• Jae Kwon and Ethan Buchman, “Cosmos Whitepaper: A Network of Distributed Ledgers”

Listen to Session 1.8

Original Roadmap

Unit I: The Internet

Before thinking about Web 3, it may be helpful to come to terms with the histories of Web 2 and Web 1 and the broader impact of telecommunications technologies. We will canvas these issues by centering a single question: What is a human being—or what is human nature—such that it develops these technologies of distance and propinquity, acquires prostheses of talk and touch? By elaborating what we seek in these tele-technologies we will be better poised to evaluate what they offer.

Session 1. Tele-History

• Tom Standage, “The Mother of All Networks” and “Love Over the Wires,” from The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-Line Pioneers Click Here

Session 2. Web 1.0

• Jessa Lingel, “Becoming Craig’s List: San Francisco Roots and the Ethics of Web 1.0” and “Craigslist, the Secondary Marketplace, and Politics of Value,” from An Internet for the People: The Politics and Promise of Craigslist

Session 3. Web 2.0

• Charles Petzold, “The World Brain,” from Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

• Justin Smith, “A Sudden Acceleration,” from The Internet is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning

Session 4. Life on Computer

• Wendy Chun, “Why Cyberspace?” from Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics

Session 5. Enjoying the Internet

• André Nusselder, “The Technologization of Human Virtuality,” from Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology

• Optional: Jerry Aline Flieger, “Twists and Trysts: Freud and the Millennial Knot” from Is Oedipus Online? Siting Freud after Freud

Session 6. Digital Bodies

• Clint Burnham, “Is the Internet a Thing?” from Does the Internet Have an Unconscious? Slavoj Zizek and Digital Culture

Session 7. Web 3.0

• Joel Monegro, “The Blockchain Application Stack”

• —, “The Shared Data Layer of the Blockchain Application Stack”

• —,”Fat Protocols”

• —, “Thin Applications”

Session 8. Digital Commons

• Nick Szabo, “Money, Blockchains, and Social Scalability”

• Jameson Lopp, “Who Controls Bitcoin Core?”

Unit II: Economics

Before all the talk of “Web 3,” there was Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is as much an intervention in digital technology as it is in monetary theory. In this Unit, we will present histories and theories of the “money” concept, as well as strive to ascertain a relation between money and surplus value. The economic problem of surplus value will be brought into connection with human nature’s surplus of virtuality as explored in Unit I.

Session 1. Hard and Virtual Money

• Gaspar Feliu, “Money and Currency,” from Money and Coinage in the Middle Ages (ed Rory Naismith)

• Edward Castranova, “Weirdly Normal: Virtual Economies and Virtual Money,” from Wildcat Currency: How the Virtual Money Revolution is Transforming the Economy

Session 2. Theories of Money: Commodity, Credit, Chartal

• Mark Peacock, “Part 1: Theories,” from Introducing Money

Session 3. Fiat Technology

• John Kenneth Galbraith, “Of Paper,” “An Instrument of Revolution,” and “The Impeccable System” from Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went

• Joan Robinson, “The Keynesian Revolution,” from Economic Philosophy

Session 4. Surplus Value

• Karl Marx, “Theories of Surplus Value,” from Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

Session 5. Money as Politics

• Stefan Eich, “Money as Capital: Karl Marx and the Limits of Monetary Politics” from The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes

Session 6. Banks and States

• Christine Desan, “Reinventing Money: The Making of Bank Currency” in Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism

Session 7. Information and Money

• Saifedean Ammous, “Digital Money” and “What Is Bitcoin Good For?” from The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking

• George Gilder, “Money in Information Theory” and “What Bitcoin Can Teach” from The Scandal of Money: Why Wall Street Recovers but the Economy Never Does and

Session 8. Exchange and Money

• Colin Drumm, excerpts from The Difference Money Makes, dissertation

Unit III: Politics

A monetary system, or system of exchange, underlies and implies possibilities for politics. This Unit will use Web 3 as an incitement to rethink democracy, sovereignty, constitutionalism, labor, autonomy, and “the political” in general.

Session 1. Beyond Money

• Kevin Werbach, “More Than Money,” from Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust

Session 2. Sovereignty or Constituent Power?

• Antonio Negri, “Constituent Power: The Concept of a Crisis,” from Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State

Session 3. The Paradox of Constitution

• Emilios Christodoulidis, “Against Substitution: The Constitutional Thinking of Dissesnsus,” from The Paradox of Constitutionalism: Constituent Power and Constitutional Form (eds Martin Loughlin and Neil Walker)

• Martin Loughlin, “Constitutional Democracy,” from Against Constitutionalism

Session 4. Democracy and Decentralization

• Jacques Ranciere, “Democracy, Republic, Representation,” from from Hatred of Democracy

• Davide Tarizzo, “The Two Paths to Modern Democracy,” from Political Grammars: The Unconscious Foundations of Modern Democracy

• Optional: Jean-Luc Nancy, “Finite and Infinite Democracy,” from Democracy In What State? (trans. William McCuaig)

Session 5. Labor After Fordism

• Franco Piperno, “Technological Innovation and Sentimental Education,” from Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics (ed Hardt and Virno)

• Maurizio Lazzarato, “Immaterial Labor,” from Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics (ed Hardt and Virno)

Session 6. Exit

• Paolo Virno, “Virtuosity and Revolution: A Political Theory of Exodus,” from The Idea of World: Public Intellect and Use of Life

Session 7. Software Politics

• Benjamin Bratton, “The Nomos of the Cloud,” from The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

Session 8. Another Politics?

• Judith Butler, “‘We The Peoples’—Thoughts on Freedom of Assembly,” from Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Aassembly

• Susan Buck-Morss, Revolution Today

Session 9: Political Economy

• Spencer Pack, “Part IV: Current Issues on the Political Economy of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies,” from The Political Economy and Feasibility of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies: Insights from the History of Economic Thought

Unit IV: Philosophy

This Unit returns to and/or foregrounds issues raised in the other Units, deepening their contours through the mediation of philosophical work on human nature, technology, individuation, and general economy.

Session 1. Talking Philosophy

• Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, “A Conversation: What Is It? What Is It For?” from Dialogues II

• Avital Ronnell, “Derrida to Freud: The Return Call,” from The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech

Session 2. Crypto-Anarchism

• Catherine Malabou, “Cryptocurrencies: Anarchist Turn or Strengthening of Surveillance Capitalism? Bitcoin to Libra,” from Australian Humanities Review

• Salman Sadeghi, “In Search of Lost Time: A Note on Catherine Malabou’s Reading of Cryptocurrencies,” from GCAS Review

Session 3. Transcendental Blockchain

• Nick Land, “Crypto-Current: An Introduction to Blockchain and Philosophy,” from Sum #10.2: Cryptocene

Session 4. Finance and Philosophy

• Arne de Boever, “The Financial Universe (After Meillassoux),” from Finance Fictions: Realism and Psychosis in Times of Economic Crisis

Session 5. Surplus-Value: Redux

• Georges Bataille, “Theoretical Introduction,” from The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, Vol 1: Consumption

Session 6. Living Money

• Pierre Klossowski, “Living Currency,” from Living Currency

Session 7. The Autonomy of Thought

• Kojin Karatani, “Socrates and Empire,” from Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy

Session 8. Individuation and the Commons

• Muriel Combes, “On Being and the Status of the One,” “The Transindividual Relation,” and “The Intimacy of the Commons,” from Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual

Session 9. The Many and the One

• Duane Rousselle, “Revolutions of the One,” from Post-Anarchism and Psychoanalysis

• Jean-Luc Nancy, The Truth of Democracy

Unit V: Law

Is code law? This Unit explores the development of contract and torts law from a historical and cultural perspective in order to think through claims of digital commonwealth or sovereignty. We will conclude with a brief examination of US securities law—a subspecies of contract law—to better appreciate how markets and regulations shape each other.

Session 1. Piracy, a Philosophy

• Daniel Heller-Roazen, “Earth and Sea,” “Into the Air,” and “Toward Perpetual War,” from The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations

Session 2. Tort and Contract

• Frances Ferguson, “Justine, or the Law of the Road,” from Pornography, The Theory: What Utilitarianism Did to Action

Session 3. Blockchain and/as Law

• Kevin Werbach, “Blockchain Governance” and “Blockchain as/and Law,” from Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust

Session 4. Crypto and/as State

• Edward Castranova, “Wildcat Currency and the State,” from Wildcat Currency: How the Virtual Money Revolution is Transforming the Economy

Session 5. Regulating Blockchain

• William Magnusson, “The Penumbra Problem,” from Blockchain Democracy: Technology, Law, and the Rule of the Crowd

Session 6. What are Securities?

• Nicholas Georgokapoulos, “Part 1,” from The Logic of Securities Law

Session 7. What are Securities? Part 2

• Nicholas Georgokapoulos, “Part 3,” from The Logic of Securities Law

Session 8. Decentralization and the Law: Practice

• Marc Boiron, “Sufficient Decentralization”

Unit VI: Ecology

Much has been made about the ecological impact of cryptocurrency mining. Our objective is not to decide on this impact, but to open the question of what “ecological thinking” cryptocurrency makes newly possible and practicable. Surplus value returns here as surplus enjoyment and surplus energy.

Session 1. Network and Ecosystem

• Justin Smith, “The Ecology of the Internet,” from The Internet is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning

Session 2. Surplus Value, Part 3: Surplus Enjoyment

• Slavoj Zizek, “Where is the Rift? Marx, Capitalism, and Ecology,” from Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide for the Non-Perplexed

Session 3. Surplus Energy

• Michael Marder, “Prolegomena to the Dialectics of Energy” and “Self-Consciousness and Its Surplus Energy,” from Hegel’s Energetics: A Reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit

Session 4. Degrowth

• Kohei Saito, “Marx’s Theory of Metabolism in the Age of Global Ecological Crisis,” from Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism

Unit VII: Business

DAOs are a major structure built on top of cryptocurrencies, but what is a DAO? For that matter, what is a business or corporation? By examining the history of coordinating and organizing human action at scale, we will come to terms with the DAO concept and its radical potential for a digital age.

Session 1. The Company

• John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, “Utopia, Limited” and “A Prolonged and Painful Birth,” from The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea

Session 2. From Company to Corporation

• John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, “The Corporate Paradox,” from The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea

• Kean Birch et al, “The Corporate Revolution” and “Corporate Governance” from Business and Society: A Critical Introduction

Session 3. Start-Uos

• William Magnussion, “The Start-Up,” from For Profit: A History of Corporations

Session 4. Organizational Design

• Eric Alston et al, “Developmental Trajectories: Institutional Deepening and Critical Transitions,” from Institutional and Organizational Analysis: Concepts and Applications

Session 5. Nonprofit

• Eric Tang, “Nonprofits and the Autonomous Grassroots,” from The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex (ed INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence)

Session 6. Making a Difference

• Dean Spade, “Part Two: Working Together On Purpose,” from Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

Session 7. DAOs

• Vitalik Buterin, “Superrationality and DAOs”

• Vitalik Buterin, “DAOs Are Not Corporations”

• Eric Alston, “Governance as Conflict: Constitution of Shared Values Defining Future Margins of Disagreement,” from MIT Computational Law Report

Unit VIII: Art

Art on blockchains, via NFTs, has been a popular area for cryptocurrency adoption. This Unit contextualizes “collectability” as an artistic and consumer desire, while also challenging us to understand blockchains as works of art in their own right, using concepts of performativity, exhibition, and publicity.

Session 1. On Galleries and Printing Presses

• Donald Thompson, “Art and Money,” from The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

Session 2. Fiction and Capital

• Elizabeth Edwards, “Money and Literature,” from Money and Coinage in the Middle Ages (ed Rory Naismith)

• Anna Kornbluh, “Fictitious Capital/Real Psyche: Metalepsis, Psychologism, and the Grounds of Finance,” from Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form

Session 3. Poetry, Money, Grief

• Anne Carson, excerpt from Economy of the Unlost: Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan

Session 4. On Collecting

• McKenzie Wark, “My Collectible Ass,” from e-flux #85

• Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library,” from Illuminations

Session 5. Performativity: What It Is

• JL Austin, excerpt from How to Do Things with Words

Session 6. The Body and the Record, or What Remains

• Peggy Phelan, “The Ontology of Performance,” from Unmarked: The Politics of Performance

• Rebecca Schneider, “In the Meantime: Performance Remains,” from Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment

Session 7. Blockahin and Performativity

• Moritz J. Kleinaltenkamp and Shaz Ansari, “Blockchain and the Performativity of Emerging Technology Theories,” from Organizing in the Digital Age: Understanding the Dynamics of Work, Innovation, and Collective Action

• Rhea Myers, “Computers and Capital: The Rise of Digital Currency,” from Proof of Work: Blockchain Provocations, 2011-2021

Session 8. Rhea Myers

• Rhea Myers, “Open Source Art Again, Again,” “Artworks and Curation on the Blockchain,” “Tokenization and Its Discontents,” and “Being and Timestamp” from Proof of Work: Blockchain Provocations, 2011-2021

Session 9. Digital Art

Omar Kholeif, “1989: The Year That Changed the World” and “The Shape of the Future,” from Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs

Unit IX: Religion

Human beings believe—–and we want to believe. What does money make it possible for us to believe, and what does belief make it possible (or impossible) for us to think about money? By unpacking the Byzantine interrelations between icon, image, and economy, we will lift our gaze to the divine economy in our constitutive surplus of belief.

Session 1. Ancient Economy

• M I Finley, “The Ancients and Their Economy” and “The State and the Economy,” from The Ancient Economy

Session 2. Divina Moneta

• Lucia Travaini, “Sacra Moneta: Mints and divinity: Purity, miracles, and power,” from Divina Moneta: Coins in Religion and Ritual (ed Nanouschka Myrberg Burström, et al)

Session 3. Image, Icon, Economy

• Marie-Jose Mondzain, “A Semantic Study of the Term Economy,” from Image, Icon, Economy: The Byzantium Origins of the Contemporary Imaginary

Session 4. Money for Paradise

• Luciana Travaini, “Coins and Identity: From Mint to Paradise,” from Money and Coinage in the Middle Ages (ed Rory Naismith)

Session 5. Divine Economy

• Giorgio Agamben, “The Mystery of the Economy,” from The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government

Session 6. Sacralization

• Devin Singh, “The Coin of God,” from Divine Currency: The Theological Power of Money in the West

Session 7. Reformation

• Frank Ruda, “Protestant Fatalism: Predestination as Emancipation,” from Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism

Session 8. Postmodern (In)credulity

• Richard Boothby, “Other Paths, Other Gods,” from Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred

Session 9. The Meaning of Life

• Jacob Needleman, “The Indefinable Something that Enters into Everything,” from Money and the Meaning of Life

Unit X: Miscellany

An ongoing overflow of texts considered for inclusion in other Units but not selected. These can be added to any Unit for further discussion of particular themes and ideas or addressed on their own.

• Isabel Millar, “The Stupidity of Intelligence,” from The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence

• Jean-Hugues Barthelemy, Life and Technology: An Inquiry Into and Beyond Simondon

• Gigi Roggero, “Operaismo Beyond Operaismo,” from Italian Operaismo: Genealogy, History, Method (trans Clara Pope)

• Mary Jacobus, “Cloud Studies: The Visible Invisible,” from Gramma: A Journal of Theory and Criticism, vol 14

Note

Coining Reason is presented for informational purposes only. Nothing contained in these or related materials should be construed as professional or financial advice.

This program is organized and run by volunteers of Neta DAO. If you would like to support Neta DAO’s work, please consider delegating with the Neta DAO JUNO, AKT, or JKL validators.