‘Communication’ in the era of ‘Empire’ and ‘multitude’

Abstract

What is the state of communication in the contemporary era – what Hardt and Negri refer to as the time of ‘Empire’ – and of its counterpart, the ‘multitude’? This paper attempts to draw the implications for communication – or the lack of it – from Hardt and Negri's recent works on the emergence of a new configuration of global power at political, economic and cultural levels (‘Empire’), and on the concomitant growth of what they term the ‘multitude’ or social groupings which hold the promise of a new global democracy. Particular attention is given to the question of the possibility of ‘successful’ communication between the agencies of Empire (at the level of political representation, for example) and the people comprising the multitude, and to the communicational difficulties faced internally by the latter. It is also argued, finally, that it is not sufficient to overcome a communicational ‘differend’ at the level of discourse, but that one should follow Silverman's suggestion that a re-evaluation of looking at images is essential if the reductive effects of strategies of seeing, promoted by Empire, are to be overcome.

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