Programmed Violence: On the Object of Media Studies

Each "new technology" inflicts "new violence" on its subjects. Following Marshall McLuhan's argument, this article outlines a theoretical frame for thinking about the relationship between violence and the media. Focusing on Stanley Milgram's experiment mentioned by McLuhan in his essay "The Violence of the Media," it argues that violence not only is conveyed or represented by that medium but resides in the medium itself. Media add violence to our already violent culture not only by their content but by the very fact of their facticity. This raises the political question of the positioning of subjects toward, as well as by, the media and the epistemological question of what the object of media studies is.