BE monograph on money from orbit.libhums

[Michael Bailey]

https://orbit.openlibhums.org/article/id/420/

Pöhlmann, S., (2016) ““I Just Look at Books”: Reading the Monetary
Metareality of *Bleeding Edge*”, *Orbit: A Journal of American
Literature* 4(1).
doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.189

Abstract

The essay analyzes Bleeding Edge for its pervasive representation of money,
arguing that it operates as a metareality in the novel both on the levels
of plot and style. Money is presented as a symbolic structure behind
reality that is accessible to the initiated, the interpretation of which
offers genuine insight about the world and its interrelations, in parallel
to religious or scientific discourses. This does not simply mean that
everything—politics, society, culture, technology, etc.—is ultimately
determined by economic factors, but rather that money underlies the reality
of these phenomena like a kind of source code, and that it is readable as
such, for better or worse. In the novel, real and virtual money is heavily
associated with moral values and their loss, although it is not at all only
associated negatively with greed and the abuse of power. Money also harbors
subversive potential in Bleeding Edge, as it can uncover corruption and
fraud as much as other conspiratorial phenomena (especially in connection
to 9/11). In particular, cash money can become an alternative medium of
communication that combines the private and the public. Money does exhibit
a tendency towards moral corruption in the novel, but at the same time it
eludes any complete control and remains an economic as well as symbolic
tool that can undermine the very capitalist system it seems to perpetuate.