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Power and vacuous communication


Vacuous communication is communication that is empty, gutted of materiality, located in networks of symbolic references that are equally empty. Through these interpenetrating chains of vacuous symbols, power finds strategies of retaining and ensconcing itself.

Vacuous communication is an essential communicative strategy of hegemonic structures.  The various combinations of otherwise disconnected words make up the formations that serve the agendas of power.

In digital networks, the vacuous formations travel quickly from the elite structures of authoritarian regimes to think tanks propped up by such regimes, to the academic-business thought leadership panels of the 1% in the picturesque meeting rooms of the Swiss Alps.

Vacuous communication thrives on word play. Wordsmiths, particularly credentialed academic experts, are integral to building infrastructures of vacuous communication.

Vacuous communication is often a collection of words.

Words that are arranged in meaningless threads with the appearance of complexity. The greater the impermeability of the mesh of words, the greater their ability to put up the wall that renders invisible the oppressions, corruption, and unethical practices of the regime. Regimes therefore have particular penchant for charlatans that will happily cook up word mixes, delivered in neatly packaged postmodern tropes, seeding doubt on the regime's strategies and simultaneously attaching the regime to aspirational concoctions.

Diplomats, academics, paper pushers, all categories of charlatans are actively recruited into think tanks and knowledge hubs to cook up the right word mixes. Appropriate financial incentives are paid for doing this dirty work.

Vacuous communication, for instance, creates frameworks and knowledge claims for seeing a totalitarian regime as a futuristic model of governance. It does so by creating and circulating representations that reject the effects of totalitarian control. How do you generate these representations?

Here is the usual recipe for creating vacuous communication:

Produce word mixes that mean nothing but sound good, collected from aspirational words (efficiency, economic transparency, participation), plant them, and then circulate them to create a mirage that obfuscates the corruption of power, particularly totalitarian power. The effervescent curtain on which the empty images are projected props up a wall, rendering invisible the techniques of totalitarian oppression and erasure. Words are first removed from their material anchors; this process of unsettling words is critical to the discursive work of power. Financial misappropriations, mis-spendings, bribery, and conflicts of interest get strategically obfuscated under the empty word mixes that mean nothing. Elaborate performances of targeting dissent are framed as transparency. These meaningless word mixes work well to distract and divert attention from the workings of totalitarian power. Through word mixes, the most corrupt of regimes can appear as the most "clean." Techniques of corruption can be written in as means of "clean governance." Techniques of circulating corruption money can be written up as "business efficiency" or "ease of business."

Similarly, consider the various versions of the term participation and how it gets thrown around. "Participation" is deployed by the worst of totalitarian regimes that seek to silence democratic participation through a variety of techniques. Incorporated into word plays, mixed in with terms such as "e," "engagement," "digital," and so on, participation turns into a vacuous word, one that means nothing and is not attached to materiality. To perform communicative inversion, the complete reversal of materiality (such as a totalitarian regime selling itself as the elixir of democracy), words need to be first emptied of the materialities tied to them. Emptying the word participation of the materiality of participation enables the regime to project itself as democratic and participatory.

Vacuous communication is a basic strategy one witnesses throughout the corridors of power, from think tanks to planning summits to global conferences on sustainable futures. Interrogating the production of vacuous communication is integral to the process of social change.

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