'Empire' records: A study of resistance and the politics of cultural production in the network age

This dissertation explores the way in which the cultural politics of popular music function as a strategy of governance by examining two case studies: Rage Against the Machine and M.I.A. The shape of musical media using a politics of resistance has fundamentally changed in recent years due to the massive influence of the rise of the network society and digital distribution. Yet this resistance, I argue, is responding to an equal change in the way that dominant institutions exert their influence through these same means. In both cases, it is the new uses of media that shift the locus of power to the everyday lives of global citizens. I use Michel Foucault's concept of biopolitical production as the primary strategy through which power is exercised as a mode of postmodern governance. Yet as the scope of this power expands to a global scale, this strategy appears to increasingly be supplanting traditional means of exercising power. Furthermore, I argue these strategies of governance have been the primary strategy of the global neoliberal project, particularly in its utilization of mediated cultural forms as a central conduit to populations.;The place of music in this arrangement is as a unique and vital site of power negotiations of these relationships. I argue that there has been a real and fundamental change in the way in which these cultural forms are politicized in the era following the introduction of digital distribution networks. Following an introductory chapter, the next three chapters of this dissertation provide a theoretical and analytical background on the ordering of power, resistance, and the global music industry, dealing respectively with the rise of globalization and global capital structures, contemporary strategies of governance, and the political economy of the global music industry. Chapter Five uses as a case study the fascinating and problematic Rage Against the Machine, perhaps the most notable musical artist representing anti cultural resistance the pre-network 1990s. Chapter Six studies M.I.A., daughter of a notable Sri Lanka resistance fighter, as an artist whose music symbolizes the cultural politics of resistance representative of the various conceptualizations of postmodern power relations in the network age. Chapter Seven provides an in-depth conclusion to this dissertation by comparing and contrasting the structure, order, and exercise of power during these two eras. I find that new uses of global media represent an understated but great threat to human freedom as cultural forms become increasing politicized, yet at the same time offer great promise if certain strategies of popular resistance can be cultivated. In either case, popular music serves as a media form with great influence on a global scale for the articulation of the public's values, beliefs, actions, and discourses, making it all the more important to consider as object of study in the network age.