Unthinking Modernity:: Innis, McLuhan, and the Frankfurt School

Lyon, David

doi:10.22230/cjc.1996v21n2a951

“…Many scholars have proposed that the marginal character of Canada's national identity situates it as an ideal site for commentary on the implications of technology and empire (McLuhan 1953(McLuhan , 1967Frye [1965Frye [ ] 1971Frye [ , 1982Kroker 1984;McLuhan and Powers 1989;Stamps 1995;Babe 2000;Cavell 2002;Powe 2006;Watson and Blondheim 2007;Berland 2009;Elder 2011Elder , 2015. This claim is well-summarized by Arthur Kroker in Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/ Grant (1984):…”

Section: Borderline Reflections: Ecology and Apocalypse In Canadian T...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediated Landscapes: Technology and Environment in Recent Canadian Cinema

Browne¹

2023

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A central defining feature of the contemporary era is an environmental crisis that has been triggered by the relationship of human-developed technologies to the natural world, which is leading us towards conditions of increasing collapse that will impact all future understandings of our era’s cultural production and experience. This crisis has led many to propose that the planet has entered a new geologic epoch, the “Anthropocene,” in which boundaries between humanity, nature, and technology have become blurred and no longer viable. In this dissertation, I explore this ecological crisis as a manifestation of mythological and perceptual frameworks that structure contemporary modes of experience, by examining how Canadian filmmakers are responding to such conditions through their artworks. Drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s notion of art as a “counter-environment” that, in its most potent capacity, acts as a “liaison between biology and technology” ([1973] 2003a, 207) or “Distant Early Warning system,” I explore how many recent Canadian films prioritize process, hybridity, decay, and transmutation to reveal the environmental status of media, developing new myths and metaphors that address the crisis of imagination that I argue is at the root of the environmental crisis. Through these approaches, the binaries between humanity, technology, and nature are revealed as false dualisms that have always been united within a greater ecological matrix—an insight that reflects the holistic study of media developed by the Toronto School of Communication. The environmental crisis cannot be resolved through any singular response, but rather necessitates a proliferation of new forms of critical thought, empathy, and modes of experience. Accordingly, in this study I explore a range of aesthetic approaches to interrogate forms of critical visuality in cinema that articulate the environmental invisibility of media, including narrative, documentary, and experimental works. These examples are united by a framework that seeks to cultivate perceptual sensitivities through revelatory forms over discursive approaches. By revealing the strong affinities between Canadian art and critical theory, I demonstrate how cinema can provide a fertile terrain for critiquing technological environments and their influence upon notions of embodiment, the natural world, and the shaping force of language.

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“…Many scholars have proposed that the marginal character of Canada's national identity situates it as an ideal site for commentary on the implications of technology and empire (McLuhan 1953(McLuhan , 1967Frye [1965Frye [ ] 1971Frye [ , 1982Kroker 1984;McLuhan and Powers 1989;Stamps 1995;Babe 2000;Cavell 2002;Powe 2006;Watson and Blondheim 2007;Berland 2009;Elder 2011Elder , 2015. This claim is well-summarized by Arthur Kroker in Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/ Grant (1984):…”

Section: Borderline Reflections: Ecology and Apocalypse In Canadian T...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediated Landscapes: Technology and Environment in Recent Canadian Cinema

Browne¹

2023

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A central defining feature of the contemporary era is an environmental crisis that has been triggered by the relationship of human-developed technologies to the natural world, which is leading us towards conditions of increasing collapse that will impact all future understandings of our era’s cultural production and experience. This crisis has led many to propose that the planet has entered a new geologic epoch, the “Anthropocene,” in which boundaries between humanity, nature, and technology have become blurred and no longer viable. In this dissertation, I explore this ecological crisis as a manifestation of mythological and perceptual frameworks that structure contemporary modes of experience, by examining how Canadian filmmakers are responding to such conditions through their artworks. Drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s notion of art as a “counter-environment” that, in its most potent capacity, acts as a “liaison between biology and technology” ([1973] 2003a, 207) or “Distant Early Warning system,” I explore how many recent Canadian films prioritize process, hybridity, decay, and transmutation to reveal the environmental status of media, developing new myths and metaphors that address the crisis of imagination that I argue is at the root of the environmental crisis. Through these approaches, the binaries between humanity, technology, and nature are revealed as false dualisms that have always been united within a greater ecological matrix—an insight that reflects the holistic study of media developed by the Toronto School of Communication. The environmental crisis cannot be resolved through any singular response, but rather necessitates a proliferation of new forms of critical thought, empathy, and modes of experience. Accordingly, in this study I explore a range of aesthetic approaches to interrogate forms of critical visuality in cinema that articulate the environmental invisibility of media, including narrative, documentary, and experimental works. These examples are united by a framework that seeks to cultivate perceptual sensitivities through revelatory forms over discursive approaches. By revealing the strong affinities between Canadian art and critical theory, I demonstrate how cinema can provide a fertile terrain for critiquing technological environments and their influence upon notions of embodiment, the natural world, and the shaping force of language.

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“…McLuhan a propósito de Hegel y Marx son particularmente iluminadores los trabajos de Gosswiler (1998) yStamps (1995).214 Estoy en deuda con Francisco Sierra por esta idea. fondo Veamos cómo funciona la tétrada de la recuperación215 (LM, 228) Para iniciar este recorrido por la tétrada de la recuperación es necesario recordar dos puntos clave.…”

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El apotegma mediático : la noción de medio en Marshall Mcluhan

Dow¹

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Este trabajo presenta un acercamiento filosófico a la noción de medio que recorre la obra de Marshall McLuhan. Se trata de un trabajo que busca poner en diálogo la obra del autor canadiense con algunos de los trabajos más representativos de la filosofía de la técnica del siglo XX. El texto está dividido en cuatro partes que llevan al lector desde los conceptos básicos como técnica y tecnología hasta el núcleo mismo de la obra de McLuhan mostrando los varios modos en que la idea de medio puede ser entendida. De igual modo la tesis busca pensar la tarea misma de la filosofía de la técnica desvinculándola de ciertas lecturas objetuales que han recorrido esta naciente tradición e intentando mostrar cómo su tarea está en pensar al hombre mismo en una relación indisoluble con su técnica y cómo ésta constituye el modo propiamente humano del habitar.

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Unthinking Modernity:: Innis, McLuhan, and the Frankfurt School

Cited by 4 publications

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Mediated Landscapes: Technology and Environment in Recent Canadian Cinema

Mediated Landscapes: Technology and Environment in Recent Canadian Cinema

Mediated Landscapes: Technology and Environment in Recent Canadian Cinema

El apotegma mediático : la noción de medio en Marshall Mcluhan

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