Unfolding rationalityVisual memory, performative accounting and Order

Paolo QuattroneUniversity of Edinburgh Business School

Not a causal encounter… – The church as ‘text’ that could be ‘read’ by

the illiterate (‘rhetorical machine’ orthopraxis Vs. orthodoxy)

– Inventory inventio; – Record recordor; Formula forma– Calculate , rationality

calculus/ratio/schemata/conto

– ‘Numbers are figures’ (Pietra, 1586) (imagines agentes, compositional art) accounting numbers not seen as representations but as a work of composition, of making links, of imagining

Accounting, rhetoric and memory…

Route of the liturgical

procession in the Abbey of Centula-

St-Riquier

Orthopraxis generates incomplete visions of truth (e.g. the Jesuits’ SE)– cf. institutional logics (systems

of meaning)

Accounting generates incomplete representations– cf. Epistemic objects (structures of ‘wanting and desire’)

Visions of truth always incomplete…

...the unfolding nature of rationality...

The more transparency, markets, rationality fail/are incomplete...

…the more we want them

How is that this continuous failure does not leave us in frustration and despair?

Need to complement a structure of ‘wanting and desire’

with a structure of ‘hope and belief’

...on the quasi-religious nature of rationality...

Part of a broader process of secularization of humanist knowledge: from improving morals and moral

judgements to purvey information and skills (Grafton and Jardine, 1986)

The ductus: a comparison between…

Route of the liturgical

procession in the Abbey of Centula-

St-Riquier

the Spiritual Exercisesthe Jesuit accounting practices

Accounting as ‘scientia prattica’ (Flori, 1636) not a search for truthful representations

...then the visual became (too) cool...

…Modern purification at work…

Browne (1673), The accurate accomptant

What can we learn from this?

Rationality as a materially based institutional logic that lacks any core and

always re-invents itself(it keeps its pragmatic/unfolding nature

while being treated as ‘a scientific’ construct)

Rationality asthe outcome of a process of

secularization of humanist practices

From the improvement of morals to purvey information and skills mastering skills = being moral

Small practices (I): operating the cash box…

The Rector

The Procurator

...’Con-fused’ nature of actions…