Abstract
McLuhan's work intervenes in the critical area where new problems of embodiment are related to modernist and avant-garde interest in the harmonisation of the senses and the role of the artist as an engineer. McLuhan uses Joyce, the English-speaking modernists and the symbolists to intuit and explore this orientation in which electric technologies modify communication — production, reproduction and dissemination. McLuhan's ‘the medium is the message’ anticipates the present convergence of medium and message in the microcomputer. McLuhan placed on the agenda a whole new vocabulary, and consequently a new conceptual structure for the investigation of art, literature, culture and communication. His agenda penetrated academic, artistic, popular and official culture while currently a McLuhanesque vocabulary has permeated not only culture and communication studies but also media and bureaucracy. McLuhan was not a theorist, but interested in probes, percepts and affects grounded in a commitment to the traditions of classical learning adapting ancient modes of exegesis to the newly emerging world of post-electric technologies.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.