media
research
technology, art,
communication
Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture
A series edited by Saul Ostrow
Now Available
Seams: Art as a Philosophical Context
Essays by Stephen Melville
Edited and Introduced by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe
Capacity: History, the World, and the Self in Contemporary Art and Criticism
Essays by Thomas McEvilley
Commentary by G. Roger Denson
Media Research: Technology, Art, Communication
Essays by Marshall McLuhan
Edited and with a Commentary by Michel A. Moos
Forthcoming Titles
Literature, Media, Information Systems
Essays by Friedrich A. Kittler
Edited and Introduced by John Johnston
England and Its Aesthetes: Biography and Taste
Essays by John Ruskin, Walter Pater, and Adrian Stokes
Commentary by David Carrier
The Wake of Art: Criticism, Philosophy, and the Ends of Taste
Essays by Arthur C. Danto
Commentary by Gregg Horowitz and Tom Huhn
Beauty Is Nowhere: Ethical Issues in Art and Design
Edited and Introduced by Richard Roth and Susan King Roth
Musings on Modernism: Marcel Duchamp and John Cage
Introduction, Essays, Interviews, and Performances by Moira Roth
Commentary by Jonathan D. Katz
Music/Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic
Edited and with an Introduction by Adam Krims
Commentary by Henry Klumpenhouwer
The Myths of Postmodern Theory
Essays by Nicholas Zurbrugg
Commentary by Warren Burt
marshall
mcluhan
essays
media
research
technology, art,
communication
edited with
commentary
michel
a. moos
Copyright 1997 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) Amsterdam B.V.
Published in The Netherlands under license by G+B Arts International.
Essays by Marshall McLuhan copyright 1980 Corinne McLuhan.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published by G+B Arts International.
This edition published 2013 by Routledge
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
711 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
2 Park Square, Milton Park
Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
McLuhan, Marshall, 19111980
Media research : technology, art, communication.
(Critical voices in art, theory and culture)
1. Mass media and technology 2. Mass media and culture
I. Title II. Moos, Michel A.
302. 234
ISBN 90-5701-081-X
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan and the Marshall McLuhan Estate for permission to publish the work of Marshall McLuhan included in this volume. I would like here to express my gratitude to Saul Ostrow, T. C. McLuhan and David Moos for invaluable advice and encouragement, as well as to Alfred van der Marck and Liza Rudneva for their editorial support and expertise, and to my wife Lane for both the message and the medium generously tendered.
Michel A. Moos
To Walter and Martha
C ritical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture is a response to the changing perspectives that have resulted from the continuing application of structural and poststructural methodologies and interpretations to the cultural sphere. From the ongoing processes of deconstruction and reorganization of the traditional canon, new forms of speculative, intellectual inquiry and academic practices have emerged which are premised on the realization that insights into differing aspects of the disciplines that make up this realm are best provided by an interdisciplinary approach that follows a discursive rather than a dialectic model.
In recognition of these changes, and of the view that the histories and practices that form our present circumstances are in turn transformed by the social, economic, and political requirements of our lives, this series will publish not only those authors who already are prominent in their field, or those who are now emergingbut also those writers who had previously been acknowledged, then passed over, only now to become relevant once more. This multi-generational approach will give many writers an opportunity to analyze and reevaluate the position of those thinkers who have influenced their own practices, or to present responses to the themes and writings that are significant to their own research.
In emphasizing dialogue, self-reflective critiques, and exegesis, the Critical Voices series not only acknowledges the deterritorialized nature of our present intellectual environment, but also extends the challenge to the traditional supremacy of the authorial voice by literally relocating it within a discursive network. This approach to texts breaks with the current practice of speaking of multiplicity, while continuing to construct a singularly linear vision of discourse that retains the characteristics of dialectics. In an age when subjects are conceived of as acting upon one another, each within the context of its own history and without contradiction, the ideal of a totalizing system does not seem to suffice. I have come to realize that the near collapse of the endeavor to produce homogeneous terms, practices, and historiesonce thought to be an essential aspect of defining the practices of art, theory, and culturereopened each of these subjects to new interpretations and methods.
My intent as editor of Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture is to make available to our readers heterogeneous texts that provide a view that looks ahead to new and differing approaches, and back toward those views that make the dialogues and debates developing within the areas of cultural studies, art history, and critical theory possible and necessary. In this manner we hope to contribute to the expanding map not only of the borderlands of modernism, but also of those newly opened territories now identified with postmodernism.
Saul Ostrow
