Volume 5 issue 1 february 2018
Pre-emptive Value
NATHAN MOORE
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This article begins from the assumption that neoliberal economies de-emphasise use value and exchange value in favour of modes of valuation related to risk and uncertainty. One effect of this is to leave individuals constantly exposed to an always uncertain future which can only be apparently mitigated through ‘joining’ or being ‘assigned to’ particular categories of the population (for example, ‘home-owner’). However, given that risk necessarily re-imparts uncertainty, any such assignment, with the aim of reducing risk, is only ever provisional and temporary. To clarify this, the paper will consider the interplay of limit and threshold in Deleuze and Guattari’s work, whilst also suggesting that property is becoming displaced by contracts. Through this latter arrangement, value is dependent upon, and increasingly articulated as, the attempt to constantly outrun uncertainty before it re-appears once more. As such, this paper will argue that a workable definition of value could be: ‘value is the current assertion of what value will be’.
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