The Corporeal Politics of Quality ( Suzhi )

TLDR: The phantom-like nature of value has been explored in the context of a global restructuring of capitalism, where certain things that formerly seemed to have so much value are now deemed to be what society (or something called that) can no longer afford as discussed by the authors.

Abstract: The phantom-like nature of value—what could be a more compelling topic in the wake of the bursting of the 1990s economic bubble, when the value of the new economy seemed suddenly to dissipate overnight? Where did value go? And how can it be that, in the midst of a global restructuring of capitalism, certain things that formerly seemed to have so much value are now deemed to be what society (or something called that) can no longer afford? The topic of value is particularly compelling in light of the momentous social transformations taking place in China during the last quarter of the twentieth century. In the movement from a planned to a market economy, the representation of value has undergone a reorganization in the realm of the biopolitical in which human life becomes a new frontier for capital accumulation. This changing rela-