Thesis 4: The rise of neuropolitical control becomes manifest in the resurgence of television culture, which has not only withstood the more discursive modus operandi of the Internet, but dramatically reduced the textual texture of the latter in favour of the digitally reproduced moving image.
Empire does not provide an adequate cultural analysis of the bio-political reconfiguration of this logic, in particular as it applies to the formation of ‘the multitude’. It has very little to say about popular culture and especially the way in which the multitude are always-already mediated by a global mix of media-technologies, which have so strongly contributed to the expansion of Empire.
9/11 marked the return of television as the main vehicle of dissemination of news. As a cool medium, television’s ability to wash over us whilst calibrating our neurosystems to an endless stream of images enabled people to ‘not-come-to-terms’ with the horror of the collapse of the WTC; instead, it induced a bizarre and morbid form of ‘amusement’ (in the critical sense given to it by Postman). Because there was no leading discursive underpinning (except the phrase ‘this is terrible’), the banality of encountering the end of the world as we know it by watching television never became an issue.
In the months following 9/11 the was an upwelling of emotional re-assessment not just in the USA but around the world, which in some cases took the form of a new sense of self-reflexivity, which was essentially pre-cognitive and non-discursive. Being-at-war always has a particular effect on news-discourse anyway, as so much time is spent on assimilating an endless stream of banal ‘facts’ whose news value cannot be assessed by journalists and editors, if only because they are heavily screened by the military regime. The fact that news has become an integral part of the war machine furthermore reduced the meaning of discourse to mere ballistics.
In the US, the Internet has traditionally been disproportionally dominated by more critical, left-liberal and intellectual subgroups. As a means of news dissemination, it has offered Americans a series of viewpoints and opinions, which they would not be able to get via the mainstream network media and newspapers (although radio is an exception here). However, 9/11 not only silenced most of these intellectuals, it also gave new impetus to a reconfiguration of Internet-activities. Imagery (e.g. of executions performed by radical Islamic groups in Iraq) started to displace textuality here as well; Internet is becoming more and more streamlined as a mode of television.
Digitalisation has had a profound impact here too; text and image are no longer ontologically separated but have become expressions of similar codes. The hyperreality of digital codes is that there is no possibility of ascertaining authenticity – editing of images and texts is an ongoing process. Veracity and validity have become meaningless in the face of the immediacy of performativity. Whereas television had already externalised our nervous systems and rendered the available for neurological manipulation and calibration; its re-articulation with the Internet has transformed this whole process into an industry of mass-deception, very similar to that of pornography.
Hence, the endocolonisation of ‘the American mind’ by television culture has attained a further stage; in which the embodiment of ‘the public sphere’ has been unveiled and become on object of pornographic enchantment. This is an essential part of the war-machine; everything becomes information, digitally encoded and packaged into images that appeal to our senses without requiring cognitive decoding. Like pornography, news regarding the war on terror requires little or no dialogue, there is no need for a plot, we know what is going to happen anyway. Everything is of little or no consequence anyway.
Also:
Seven Theses on Terror, Security and The New World Order: Thesis 3
Seven Theses on Terror, Security and The New World Order: Thesis 2
Seven Theses on Terror, Security and The New World Order: Thesis 1