A vague reflection on value, or, the (im)possibility of radical imagination

Law restricts the imagination of possible realities. Entangled with value production, it sets expectations for a fictional future, with world-making effects. In Dehm's words, “the performative effect of future expectations thus creates an inherent circularity: the stabilization of future expectations guides present actions, and present actions cause expected future to come into being”. Law can, or pretends to be able to articulate, stabilize and regulate desired futures. This is a process that affects and is affected by valuation practices. It is as effective as it is selective. Van Den Meerssche and Gordon move with Louise Amoore, in an attempt to investigate how algorithms are “establishing new patterns of good and bad, new thresholds of normality and abnormality”. Tristan Tzara's Dada manifesto is a reminder that all manifestos fight old dogma by establishing new dogma. It is also a reminder that nothing is without contradiction. That new and old co-exist. That value is always in flux.