Superimposing information and fiction, the Human Valley winter presentation «The Money Plot» by Egija Inzule, Tobias Kaspar and Hannes Loichinger takes a look at how society deals with the uni-versal means of money exchange.
Introduced as the thematic focus of Issue O of the journal PROVENCE and with the exhibition «Les Journalistes» (1986/1987, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), which was curated by Chantal Georgel, in mind, «The Money Plot» continues the observations on journalistic formats and society novels of the late 19th century and compares Honoré de Balzac’s novel Illusions perdues (1836–1843) with Guy de Maupassant’s Bel Ami, both of which tell the socio-economic tale of parvenus in French society.
“From the 19th century, at the latest, financial transactions and markets have been considered as exemplary social scenes”, as literary scholar Joseph Vogl wrote in the FAZ not long ago. “It ap-pears that literature, in particular, wanted to repeatedly decode the dynamics, types and machine-tions, the sweeping gestures and petty secrets, the norm positioning and pathologies that dictate our fate.” Vogl refers to the parallelizing of the progressing narrative with the continually replen-ished payments of the anonymous German protonovel Fortunatus (1509) and the speculation novel of the crisis-shaken 19th century – Émile Zola’s L’Argent (1891) and Balzac’s banker’s novels.
In the early 20th century, sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss introduced exchange into social theory as the primary moment of the establishment of social contact and as the origin of sociallization. This concept, which is developed in various works by Mauss, including his essay “Essai sur le don” (1923/1924), was received with astonishment as it does not formulate the social and the economic principle as opposites but as completely connected. According to Mauss, a gift is price-less in principle but may be reciprocal. It is located between the pure and one-sided gift, which does not allow for reciprocation, and the economic transaction, which concludes with pay-ment for the goods obtained. Social conventions become visible through the use of money in every-day life, which, like tipping, hover between the two categories and are subject to the unwritten laws of social guidelines.
Following the Driftwoods announced with Issue V, in November 2011, PROVENCE will publish a special edition THE PROVENCE CITY GUIDE: NICE, a travel guide to the city of Nice which is shown for the first time in conjunction with the presentation «The Money Plot»: “You don’t come to France’s fifth-largest city for a quiet time or a seaside holiday. You come for business – not pleasure.”