Money as the Big Other
Money is not silent. It simply never speaks in the first person. It says “equivalent,” says “allowed,” says “settled,” says “not enough.” Between these words, the subject believes it is calculating, when in fact it is being calculated. Money is not a thing; money is a network of signifiers. The piece of paper in your hand has weight only because the entire symbolic order nods behind it. But who is the one nodding? We call him the Big Other. Money is the most everyday face of the Big Other: it guarantees that everything can be exchanged, but never guarantees what will remain of you after the exchange.
People say money is a means. What an innocent pretext. Once a means is universally accepted, it becomes the echo of an end. You desire money not because it can buy objects, but because it promises to fill that eternally missing place. That place is within the subject, like a hole; money is paper stuffed into the hole — the more you stuff, the more real the hole appears. Thus the subject says: when I have enough money, I will become myself. But the “I” is never a bank deposit; it is a trace torn by signifiers. The more money circulates, the more the subject believes itself to be whole; this is precisely its most refined fantasy.
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Money is the desire of the Big Other. You save money because the Big Other demands that you prepare for a rainy day; you spend money because the Big Other demands that you enjoy; you owe money because the Big Other has already written your future into the bill. Debt is not an accident of money; debt is the temporal form of money. It makes the subject live in advance within a repayment that has not yet arrived. Thus you are not the one who possesses money; you are a narrative possessed by money: once had, still owed, to be repaid. Money does not speak, yet it makes you ceaselessly say “I.”
Yet the Big Other does not exist. Nor does money exist — as the final guarantee, it does not exist. There exists only the circulation of signifiers, the rules of exchange, the rituals of belief. You believe in money because others also believe; others believe because you already believe. This circle has no outside, no final gold standard, no God who can sign as guarantor. Money is an empty signifier; precisely because it is empty, it can be filled by any fantasy. Nation, success, freedom, security, love — all can be converted into its idiom. Like the Big Other, it gives you a position and then withdraws as you approach.
Therefore, before money, what the subject should hear is not “how much” but “you lack.” Money does not cure lack; money organizes lack. It turns lack into calculable debt and desire into jouissance payable in installments. The discourse of capitalism manifests here: it does not let the subject ask “What does the Big Other want?”; it keeps the subject busy paying debts, so busy as to forget that the Big Other has no answer at all. Surplus jouissance flickers in the account balance, like *objet petit a*: always just short, always something more to be earned.
I do not say money is evil. Evil is too moral, too much like applying makeup to fantasy. I only say: money is the mask of the Big Other, and behind the mask there is no face. You may trade, love, lie, and pray before the mask, but do not ask it for a guarantee. The only guarantee it gives you is to make you keep asking.
