ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 introduces the second key analytic of the book, the idea that money cultures are performed. The chapter open up debates around performativity and argues that although the performativity thesis is often viewed as falling into one of two camps, in fact it is more useful to use the different conceptions together as complementary layers. Thereafter, the chapter attends to two further, ‘lively’, features of the layering of performativity in central banking. One is the emergence of counter-performativity or misfires which have a force de rupture. The other is creative responses to difficult questions or situations, so-called improvizations.
