Rags Make Paper, Paper Makes Money
Material Texts and Metaphors of Capital
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4922151 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jonathan Senchyne (0000-0002-0090-3176, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 545-555 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Technology and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-165X • E-ISSN: 1097-3729 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/tech.2017.0047 |
| PMID | 28649119 |
| OpenAlex | W2667610735 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 4 |
Because nineteenth-century paper was made from rags, the materiality of paper money became a likely ground from which to debate the nature of value in modern capitalism. On one hand, if paper money was backed by nothing but itself, then it was worth little more than itself: a gathering of lowly rags. On the other hand, the process of turning trashed rags into valuable paper modeled how capital could seem to grow out of nothing. Two nineteenth-century literary narratives provide examples of how rags performed considerable social and metaphorical work in the construction of an epistemology of capitalism and its "paper technologies."
Aesthetics · Art · Capital (architecture) · Capitalism · Economics · Epistemology · Literature · Materiality (auditing) · Narrative · Neoclassical economics · Nothing · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Time value of money · Value (mathematics) · Visual arts · Computer Science · Finance · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,57 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |