Abstract
This chapter probes the technical and infrastructural operations of logistical apparatuses to propose the concept of the logistical episteme. The chapter examines how contemporary power is produced and organized within and through logistical technologies and industries specific to contemporary capitalism. The concept and material condition of the logistical episteme is elaborated with reference to industrial tendencies, geopolitical infrastructures, and technical systems operative within global logistics. In so doing, the chapter builds an account of world-systems reorganized and conditioned as regions by the logistical episteme. The chapter argues that an analysis that begins with the logistical episteme arrives at a considerably different comprehension of geopolitical formations at historical junctures that distinguish the variations of capital in epochal terms. In short, the chapter proposes a media theory of geopolitical formation parsed through the episteme of logistics.
Keywords: logistical episteme, cybernetics, capitalism, geopolitics, infrastructure, labor
Chapter published in in Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness and Yiğit Soncul (eds), De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Cultures, Berlin: De Gruyter, 439-453. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111316857-044. PDF available here.
