De-Provincialising Media and Communications: Frictions in the New World Disorder

What was at one time envisaged as the dawn of a digitally enabled and friction-free era of constant and globalised productivity nowadays looks rather more like having merely been a passing phase of peaceful post-World War II economic boom-time, largely specific to the world’s North-Western Temperate Zone. In the shadows of the Covid pandemic, the burgeoning climate/energy crisis and the resurgence of military conflict following the collapse of the Cold War settlement, that era now seems to be grinding towards a halt. In this context, global trading systems are increasingly shifting from an emphasis on maximisation of speed of delivery to a more cautious emphasis on security, involving a recognition of the inherent fragility of these systems` claims to eliminate the`friction of distance`. The actual forms of mobility and the virtual modes of connectivity are both, increasingly being redefined as unevenly distributed privileges. Meanwhile, populist campaigns to “take back control” of national borders articulate the xenophobia of fearful indigenous populations. In these circumstances, both the geographical `provinciality` and the ahistorical ‘presentism’ of the largely unacknowledged assumptions underlying our field are in serious need of reformulation.