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Cardozo Law Review

Abstract

In the eighties, the German-Swiss artist Dieter Roth (1930-1998) formulated a theory of money which throws a cruel light on one of the most important instruments of social exchange. That money often comes from dirty business is a commonplace even if it cannot be denied as a fact. But the artist went beyond this observation. Far from being a "beautiful soul," Dieter Roth developed the idea that it belongs to the essence of money to have dark and criminal origins which arise from the same sources as our fears. Money, he said, is a kind of sedative, used to "conjure up pacification," but in reality it stems from "the murderous depth of nightmares." Dieter Roth earned a lot of money but always spent it on his family, friends and his production of art and books. He also threw it away, destroyed it. Working twice a week as a psychoanalyst with the inmates of a prison in the north of France, I will show how Roth's theory, an integrated part of his thinking and art, helps me in my reflections on the relation between crime, justice and society. Roth's work was radically directed against all artistic practices which content themselves in nourishing illusions in a similar way to religion and which have no other purpose than to function as anodynes. Roth's work approaches the real as that which is impossible to represent, and he deconstructs fantasy, as a protective screen between the subject and his/her symptom. So he enables us to reinterpret the two hypotheses concerning the relation between crime and society: Freud's hypothesis of the primordial crime (murder of the father) as the origin of the law and its reversion by Lacan's axiom - based on Saint Paul - that jouissance presupposes the law. If money, as one of the most important social institutions, comes from crime, the neat separation between crime and society is nothing but a pious fiction.

Disciplines

Law | Medical Jurisprudence

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