Naked Money

In his rarely-read-but-frequently-cited work, The Philosophy of Money, the early German sociologist Georg Simmel makes some interesting remarks on economic transactions. Ideal-typically, he claims, the symbolic power in any market exchange lies with the person who puts down the money, the buyer, at the expense of the one who picks it up, the seller. Economic value is really the creation of the transaction itself, but, ultimately, Simmel claims that the one who leaves with the goods and not the sum paid is the one who has asserted him or herself through the trade (of course, in real life, countless exceptions present themselves, such as a transaction of overpriced goods; purchases made in material desperation; or simply charitable purchases – though the latter can easily be translated into a defense for Simmel's point). Simmel's point is not to contrast the use of money to expressions of altruism, but to barter: the prototypical form of material circulation.

The power ubiquitous relationship of economic transactions is, according to Simmel, most clearly witnessed in the purchase of sexual favors. By performing a sexual favor, the prostitute, as it were, submits herself entirely. The john, on the other hand, exploits the freedom and power of his money and sets the terms for the exchange. Simmel hints at the following twist of social relations: if sexual favors are acquired through some form of barter, the provider sets the terms, and the recipient is the one to appear desperate; in monetary prostitution, on the other hand, it is the provider of the services who seem desperate for the money of the buyer.

I think there is a fundamental similarity between Simmels Philosophy of Money and Joseph A. Roach's Slave Spectacles and Tragic Octoroons. Roach, too, regards the introduction of money to social exchange as a way to undress the social relationships of their secrecy, of their public guard. It easily turns naked, at least for some of those involved. Roach's depiction of the antebellum Louisiana slave market as a theatrical spectacle gets at yet another point: markets will often be sexualized. Black slaves were often displayed (partially or fully) undressed and mounted on auctioneers' tables where they would be requested to move, dance, and so forth. This was true of both male and female slaves. In contrast to the fully dressed purchasers, the naked skin of the people for sale created an erotic or even homosocial atmosphere, according to Roach.

To me, the ingenious part of Roach's account is the fact that he refuses to view the trade in slaves in isolation, but rather considers it as a constitutive part of the entire economy of the Louisiana antebellum market. On one table in the Rotunda, pictures would be sold, at another, real estate, and on a third, black slaves. The three tables complete the economic circuit: "money transforms flesh into property, property transforms flesh into money, flesh transforms money into property" (p. 59). Hence, the selling of naked bodies epitomizes the freedom ant totality of the market through a spectacle which signals that 'everything is for sale'.

Roach, a theater historian, convincingly shows how the spectacle of slavery and nudity was also created in plastic, visual, and stage art on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 19th century. The point, I take it, is twofold. Firstly, markets in contentious commodities can be sexualized in order to continue to circulate. Spectacles which entice purchasing fervor and excitement are able to maintain market order through the appeal the entitlements of purchasers, 'everything is for sale!'. Secondly, although plantation slavery is over, Roach gives us hints of its vestiges through his hints at modern commercialism and the entertainment industry of contemporary popular culture. Our current age too is imbued with sexualized bodies and the fusion of sexualized spectacles with completely unrelated objects. Money is easily sexualized (Simmel), and markets will often be theatrical (Roach). Although markets today are diffused in space and no longer dependent on locational proximity, on could ask if not the advertisement industry assures the continued existence of the sexualized spectacle that makes things run.

-- Alexander