Money and the Sacred Center
The relationship between money and the sacred, in Center Study, is not merely analogical or historical — it is constitutive. Money does not arise from barter or from some neutral medium of exchange between individuals on the periphery; it arises from the ritual scene itself. As Katz writes in The Scene is the Same, "There is no longer a single event of distribution in which the community as a whole participates, and therefore no direct, shared ritual event in which the exchange with the sacred center is unmediated. It is here that we can locate the origin of money and debt, which serve as extensions of the scene and prolongation of the event."1. Money is, in this sense, a technology of deferral — a way of keeping the originary scene alive when direct participation in it is no longer possible.
The foundational debt that money extends is the debt owed to the center itself. In the ritual order, each member of the community returns a portion of what the center has provided — this is sacrifice. As Katz elaborates in There Is No Economy but Only the Debt to the Center, money is "the concrete realization of this sign of recognition" to the sacred center, "a credit drawn on the sacred that cannot be freely reproduced."2. The originary asymmetry between center and periphery — recognition and obedience from the periphery, existence and sustenance from the center — is not abolished by money but mediated and prolonged by it. The scene of a transaction "dissolves instantly because money allows the “gift’s” recipient to pay his debt at once," yet this instantaneous discharge merely displaces the underlying debt without canceling it.
Money also tracks the verticalization of the sacred center across distance and time. As Katz observes, "money becomes more “generalized” as a medium of exchange as the sacred center is further verticalized and covers greater distances, meaning that pilgrims coming to the center to sacrifice are too far away to bring their goods with them and need money to buy them on the spot."2. And in War, Art, Bureaucracy and other Miscellanies, Katz states plainly: "money begins with ritual, or, rather, with a breakdown or perhaps extension of ritual, when the congregants are unable to bring their own animal to sacrifice and must be provided money (say, by their commander) to buy an animal at the temple itself. Money is always distributed from (and first of all purchased from) the center, so as to pay tribute (taxes) to the center (the king)—money is always the vehicle of a tributarian economic order."3.
The desacralization of the center does not free money from its ritual origins — it transforms money into the dominant medium through which the now-dissolved sacred order continues to operate. In War, Art, Bureaucracy and other Miscellanies, Katz notes that "Money is separated from ritual and the juridical when the occupant of the center is desacralized (first of all sacrificed), which is to say money proliferates when the problem of “tyranny” emerges,"3. What had been structured by honor and prescribed ritual forms now operates through money, which inherits the function of the center while concealing its sacred genealogy. As Katz argues in Exchanges withe Center Over Time, "the tendency of money is to abstract from all that and render it irrelevant. But what money doesn't abstract from is its relation to central authority, as means of distribution and measure of stability."4.
The crystallizing formulation comes from There Is No Economy but Only the Debt to the Center: "Whence this sacred upon which credit is drawn, if the umbilical cord to the originary scene and, presumably, the ritual order, has been cut? … he also, we think, provides us with a glimpse of what must be elided in order to conclude that the market order has been set adrift from the ritual."2. The market does not supersede the sacred — it presupposes it, drawing credit on an account that was opened on the originary scene and has never been closed.
Excerpts
"Money is always distributed from (and first of all purchased from) the center, so as to pay tribute (taxes) to the center (the king)—money is always the vehicle of a tributarian economic order."
War, Art, Bureaucracy and other Miscellanies · Substack Read →
"All discourse is with and of the center; all exchanges are of and with the center; all discourses are mediating exchanges with and through the center. It wouldn't be wrong to say that the human is the center speaking and exchanging with itself, with humans as the medium of discourse and exchange. We're the language and money of the center."
Exchanges withe Center Over Time · GABlog Read →
"Credit is the monetization of debt and succeeds previous forms of expressing obligation like honor—it is only when the central bank (or, maybe, a more decentralized banking system outside of direct political control) replaces the general “pointman” that we have a credit order. But credit is part of the long history of debt, which is the history of humanity, beginning with our debt to the central being on the originary scene."
Credit and Succession · Substack Read →
"Originary indebtedness also helps us clarify one of Gans's most important anthropological/historical counters to Girard's assumption that human sacrifice founds the human—his observation that the earliest humans, those for whom the center is not yet occupied by a human, tend to sacrifice and have as their deities animals, with human sacrifice coming at a much later, imperial state of human development. As we get more and more distant from the center, and the interval between debt issuance and dischargement grows, the debt become overwhelming, even unbearable, to the point where even the sacrifice of the first-born to the God-emperor is not enough, and nothing less than total donation of all one's property and capabilities to the center will serve even as paying down the minimum."
Data as Currency and the Debt to the Center · Substack Read →
"The originary event involves an exchange between center and periphery. This is an asymmetrical exchange, recognition and obedience from the periphery and existence, protection, even creation, from the center. This exchange is materialized in ritual, as a portion of the meal that the center has provided for us and enabled us to share, is returned to the center."
The Scene is the Same · Substack Read →
"Money is not just a metaphor, a means of assessing quantitative equivalence; money is metonymy, a means to sequence debt denomination and discharge… Money exists in time, and this time is the time of fluctuations in legitimacy and sovereignty."
There Is No Economy but Only the Debt to the Center · PDF Read →
"It's still a market society, but the exchange between individuals for the sake of fulfilling individual desires no longer describes very much of it—to address it comprehensively you must speak in terms of your debt to the center, what you must pay so that your credit holds, which may be anything from holding a steady job and saving money to being willing to serve as part of a rent-a-mob to destroy someone else's credit."
Designing Idioms for Data Treatment · Substack Read →