The Virtual Marshall McLuhan

320 Pages·2001·16.99 MB·English

by  Donald Theall

The Virtual Marshall McLuhan
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The Virtual
Marshall McLuhan
DONALD F. THEALL
WITH A HISTORICAL APPENDIX
BY EDMUND CARPENTER
McGill-Queen's University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
© McGill-Queen's University Press zooi
ISBN 0-7735-ZI19-4
Legal deposit first quarter 2001
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
This book has been published with the help of a
grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences
Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada.
McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the
financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development
Program (BPIDP) for its activities. It also acknowl-
edges the support of the Canada Council for the
Arts for its publishing program.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Theall, Donald E, 192.8-
The virtual Marshall McLuhan
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7735-zi 19-4
i. McLuhan, Marshall, 1911-1980. z. Mass media
specialists—Canada—Biography. I. Title.
P9Z.5-MZ4T44 zooi 3oz.z3'o9z coo-9oiO53-x
Typeset in lo/iz Sabon by True to Type
To Three McLuhanesque Friends and Colleagues
DU§AN MAKAVEJEV
Cineaste Extraordinaire - Poet, Satirist,
and Master of the Human Comedy
JACQUES LANGUIRAND
Modernist Pythagorean Poet, Broadcaster,
and Multi-media Artist,
BRIAN MOREL
Master Pedagogue, Co-conspirator,
and Guide in Media Convergence
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Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Prelude: McLuhan's Basic Probes and Perceptions i
Introduction: Who/What Is Marshall McLuhan? 2.1
i The Techno-Prophet as Poet and Trickster 3 8
z McLuhan the Correspondent: His Writings as Probes,
Percepts, and Affects 51
3 From the Trivium to the Tetrad: Media as Artefact
and Language 67
4 The Professor and the Publicist: Tom Wolfe,
the Firehouse Boys, and Marshall 81
5 McLuhanesque Ambivalence: Power and Cultural
Production 9 5
6 McLuhan and the Cults: Gnosticism, Hermeticism,
and Modernism 108
7 McLuhan as Prepostmodernist and Forerunner
of French Theory iZ5
8 McLuhan as Trickster: The Poetry of Cliche 138
viii Contents
9 McLuhan, Joyce, and the Evolution of Cyberculture 153
10 Joyce, Light, and the Road to Digiculture 170
11 McLuhan as Modern Satirist 187
12 Conclusion: Rehabilitating the Arts and the Artist 2.02.
APPENDIX A: Biographical Notes and The Medium
Is the Rear View Mirror 215
APPENDIX B: Edmund Carpenter,
"That Not-So-Silent Sea" 235
Notes 263
Bibliograpy 287
Index 299
Preface
The Virtual Marshall McLuhan arose from a number of serendipitous
events. First, meeting Robert Dobbs, who shared a common interest in
James Joyce's later writings and in Marshall McLuhan. That meeting
occurred during the time that McLuhan was again coming to attention
through his adoption by the "Wired" world, beginning with Stuart
Brand's The Media Lab in the mid 19805. In 1992 I published a paper
entitled "Beyond the Orality/Literacy Dichotomy: James Joyce and
the Prehistory of Cyberspace" in Postmodern Culture, which clearly
raised the relationship of James Joyce and McLuhan's pre-vision of
digital culture. As a result of that paper I made contact with Darren
Tofts, Lawrence James, Michael Groden, and others interested in Joyce
and Hypermedia. In the mid-1990s two invitations to participate in
conferences in New York City, one, co-sponsored by NYU and Colum-
bia and at the invitation of Sylvere Lotringer and Sande Cohen, on
"French Theory in North America" where I spoke of McLuhan as a
precursor of French theory in North America; and the other, on
McLuhan at Fordham University and at the invitation of Lance Strate,
chair of Media Ecology, renewed and stimulated my interest in the
importance of McLuhan's unique role in the final decades of the twen-
tieth century. During the same period I met Adrienne Wortzel in New
York, a generous and perceptive artist, whom I first encountered
through her web page. That encounter and those meetings further
increased my interest in revisiting McLuhan. These events not only
rekindled a need to situate McLuhan within a context contemporary
with his own development as an acute observer of the rise of digital-