Infrastructures of Empire in the 21st Century

• In Event: The Long Life Span of U.S. Media Empire

Abstract

This essay attempts to account for the void in the study of media and empire in the shadow of 14 years of on-going wars in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. Looking specifically at the sites of the US led war on terror we find studies of media and political transformation have paid scant attention to geopolitical histories and the crises of neoliberal capitalism. This is partially explained by the limitations of Eurocentric discussions of Empire popular in the 1970s and 1980s. However, we argue that a more meaningful engagement requires examining the ways in which (post-)colonial infrastructures of empire are manipulated for the benefit of new regional alliances, themselves part of existing rivalries emanating from the 20th Century. We explore this contradiction with particular focus on regional powers like China, India, Iran and Israel and analyze the paradoxical global competition developing simultaneously between and within intra-imperial struggles through the lens of media infrastructures.

Authors

• Paula U. Chakravartty, New York U

• Miriyam Aouragh, U of Westminster