Invisible Money as the Instrument for Social Control: Imaginary Colonization of the Virtual Exchange Space

Abstract

The goal of this essay is to analyze what happens to the visual significance of money in the context of digital reality. Firstly, the essay proposed to consider the features of using invisible money deprived of substance to trace the visual specifics of electronic money in the context of the transformations of the symbolic exchange practices. Secondly, the investigation emphasizes the visual representations in the virtual spaces of symbolic exchange to demonstrate the specifics of ideological manipulations at the level of the imaginary that can be associated with electronic money. The empirical material for the visual analysis contains cryptocurrency logos, as well as the visual representations related to virtual states and NFT platforms. In the digital space, the symbolic exchange practices using money become imaginary due to the separation of money as an idea from its material form as a physical carrier. But these practices are still associated with the visualizations that anchor the value of invisible money in everyday life, existing as pure convention without material grounding. Transitioning to electronic money, the possibilities of ideologization through images of everyday life are minimized, as in the case of cryptocurrency logos. And virtual spaces of exchange are subject to imaginary colonization, as can be traced in the ideological implications of the virtual states like Asgardia and Veyshnoria, as well as NFT platforms. Such spaces become a field for political expression impossible in everyday life, although attempting to substitute the latter.

Text in Russian