ABSTRACT
This essay begins by addressing the value side of the rubric of value/aesthetics, to the extent that such a rubric exists, as an ongoing conversation between mutually informing discourses. Our intent on focusing in this way is not to marginalize a discussion of the aesthetic; neither is it a gesture toward privileging value. Rather, we view it as the theoretical starting point for our project, since the concept of value is tied so firmly, especially by Marxist and many post-Marxian theorists, to particular understandings of labor and exchange. A good deal of what we want to accomplish involves rethinking, though by no means entirely abandoning, the connection between value and labor. We want to attempt a beginning of new ways to think through value and labor, and thus also consider the political and aesthetic implications of a more flexible realignment of these two fundamental concepts.
