Media report power relations without transmitting their lived effects

Evidence

An important principle of the process of interaction is that its force lines can be reported without the report ever having any effect. Conternporary flash agents (radios, newspapers, televisions, films, and their by-products) have long ceased to be capable of producing such effects, but this is because they spread the radiance of their own dazzle, which is only the reflection of force lines that go unnoticed. For that matter this is possibly the quickest route to identifying the lines of force thus revealed (identification being made not through reflection but through the sort of diffracted provocation that is the mark of these agents). — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 883

Categorization

• XREF: Glissant’s claim that media relay only the ‘dazzle’ rather than force lines parallels the culture-industry argument the Frankfurt School library already covers. — connects to: Media are neither state-controlled nor autonomous but oriented within power structures; Communication is never neutral but embeds constitutive historical power relations — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 996; Power operates through indirect communication, not direct action — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 604 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Media are neither state-controlled nor autonomous but oriented within power structures #corroborates (0.85)
• Communication is never neutral but embeds constitutive historical power relations #expands (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 996
• Power operates as a communication medium of conditional alternative-pairs, not raw force #expands (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 624
• Power operates through indirect communication, not direct action #expands (0.72) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 604