Communication and Epistemological Struggle

Abstract

This chapter takes up an earlier reflection (Bolaño, 2009) on the epistemological struggle incumbent upon the political economy of communication, which is regarded as an alternative critical reference framework for the field of communication in general, at a time when the Third Industrial Revolution is making the capitalist mode of production increasingly computer-based and communicational thanks to an extensive shift towards the subsumption of intellectual work and the general intellectualization of labour processes and consumption (Bolaño, 1995, 2002). Under these conditions the so-called communication (and information) sciences end up taking on an uncommon centrality in the epistemological struggle affecting the entire field of the social sciences since the foundational moment of the critique of political economy.