Notes on Objectual Valuation

Abstract

This chapter draws on the notion of ‘objectual’ practice to investigate a distinctive register of valuation that is becoming increasingly prominent in today’s informational economies. The chapter introduces an expansive, ‘ontological’ understanding of objectual valuation and elaborate this understanding through empirical examples drawn from branding, digital analytics, and environmental art. Each of these fields implements empirical methods, devices, and arrangements that deploy dynamics of objectual valuation. They stand out for their investment in the empirical detection of ‘happening relations’ in ways that do not require the attribution of effects to either subjects or objects, individuals or environments. The chapter discusses the capacities of these types of devices for inter-articulation, the creation of opportunities for valuation by bringing different fields into relation. However, none of these devices constitute objectual valuation as a process of socialization, which the chapter proposes is the critical object of investigation and elaboration in this area.