Hardt,Negri,and Antagonism

At first glance, Hardt and Negri.FN”s brief excursion into the sociology of media in Empire is hardly earth shattering; in fact it is quite disappointing. In Empire the media occupies a fraught and complex space between the past (civil society) and the emergence of the neoliberal consensus in which capitalism is considered the only social and economic option. Popular instrument or lackey for corporate capital, this is the tension that marks institutional forms of media. But by looking more closely at Hardt and Negri’s diagram of Empire, we find that there is a second and more expansive sense of the operation of media. Media works as the glue that holds the heterogeneous components of Empire in place. This glue (media operation), however, serves a double function. On the one hand, it works as communication that connects and information is exchanged, but, on the other, it connects in such a way that it maintains heterogeneity and distance. The double function of media as communication, the article contends, should be understood in terms of the logic of connection without connectivity. This logic is central in mechanisms of control in the context of Empire, and, the article maintains, crucial for any analysis of contemporary media today.