Decentring ingenuity: Calculation, intuition and atmospheres in the Bank of England's financial literacy assemblages

This article contributes to conceptualizations of financial literacy and subjectification. An important pivot for the dominant Foucauldian approach on financial subjectivity is the calculative device and the creation of informed savers and investors. The important move I make is to argue that the general conception of the calculative invoked in this literature is “ingenuity”. I present an alternative approach which seeks to decentre the logical and routine aspects of the calculative. In this article, then, I seek to give more space to “intuition, affect and spontaneity”, than work on calculative devices driven by logic and routine. I present the findings of ethnographic research into “nested assemblages” at the Bank of England Museum. The example of the Bank of England museum is used to show the different levels of causality in assemblages and highlight that interactive museum displays can provide a spontaneous, embodied experience of macroeconomic forces and affective atmospheres.