[...] One might be tempted to conduct a deconstructive reading of neoclassical economics in the style of Jacques Derrida to try and discern what precisely is the ‘absent presence’ quietly animating this vast machinery of means in the dark margins of its own impossibility. On the other hand, perhaps there’s good reason why Derrida steered clear of economics as such. For its social centre is strictly void, a perceptive abyss that is bereft of wider political reflection. This variant of nothingness is frightening since it consists of interminable tautologies: ‘the reason you do this is because you do this … now let’s model it’. From the rise of the Chicago School onwards, we are no longer permitted to ask why, for example, we have banks, prisons, markets, the cumbersome institution of work and so forth. Challenge any official about this and their gaze slowly drifts away into nothingness with a dumb ‘huh?’ expression. In a universe ruled only by means (especially prices and money) the unassuming margins that Derrida argued were so important for grasping a discourse (i.e., it’s what is not said, continuously deferred that gives a text its deceptive positivity) are suddenly missing.