Value is a discursive construct.
At first glance, this assertion may not appear to be controversial, nor may it appear to be very fecund. Allow us, then, to state immediately some of the implications of this position. Perhaps by doing so we can indicate from the outset what difference, in terms of consequences and effects, such a position may make.
Discourse versus the Ubiquity of Value
First, the discursivity of value implies that value does not inhere, ubiquitously, in any object or life-world. Value has no universal ontological referent. Any event can be understood in terms of a value discourse--but need not be. And this implies that even in the realms where value is posited as "obvious" (for example, in the question of how material goods are transferred from one person to another across a social space, or how one may experience works of human creativity), seeing value in these sites is always an "imposition" or rather a particular lens through which a unique sense can be made out of the events that are perceived there. The idea that all so-called economic or aesthetic events must either reduce to or contain a value component is often defended on the grounds that value is universal and ubiquitous in the sense that it is given to discourse by the objects or subjects themselves. The "naturalness" of value is then proposed as stemming from either its objectivity or subjectivity. These positions are precisely ones we wish to elide in theorizing value as discursive.
Value as Neither and Both "Objective" and "Subjective"
Another consequence, then, of thinking of value as a discursive construct is exactly to move outside of the polarity created by objective and subjective notions of value. Beginning with the premise of the fundamental discursivity of evaluation and valorization, of preference and price, of use-value and exchange-value, and of taste, truth, and treasure, we believe that there are problems and paradoxes that cannot be contained within the supposedly secure boundaries of either subjective or objective notions of value. In our view, value is neither and, in some ways, both objective and subjective. Insofar as discourse is social and material and in this sense "objective," beyond the choices and acts of any particular individual, value can be understood to constitute an ontology. At the same time, since discourse involves the postioning and constitution of subjects who, then, perform value and live its effects through their different experiences, value can be understood to exist as a category of subjectivity. But, in taking the position that value is discursive, we want to be careful not to privilege either of these poles and also to point out that discourse is always "other" than objective or subjective.
The Realm of Non-Value
The discursivity of value also suggests to us that there are realms of non-value that are constituted outside of value. This view has two components: first, that there are discourses that produce understandings of events usually regarded as the preserve of value without any reference whatsoever to value; and second, that there exists something outside of discourse, which, if value is discursive, means that, in these other realms, value does not live, even though it may be one of its (over)determinants.
Different Discourses of Value
Finally, for us, there does not exist now (nor probably in the past) a master trope or discourse of value. While we are concerned here with how worth, appropriateness, market price, judgment, and so forth are constituted discursively, we note that the differences among and between these terms and their appearance as value categories in specific sites of communication and interaction suggest that it may be mistaken to see them as all referring to a metaconcept of value. We adhere to the view that value categories emerge in different ways at different sites, and we accept any criticism of what follows below of our possible conflation and movement to unify what may be radically distinct and heterogeneous concepts and discursive objects. Put bluntly, we acknowledge that in the fields of economic and aesthetic value, there is a multiplicity of discourses of value that constitute their subjects in distinct and different ways.
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