Marshall McLuhan

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Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980)

Marshall McLuhan, an Edmonton-born Communication theorist, philosopher and educator, is perhaps most widely known for coining the phrase, “The medium is the message” and “global village.” McLuhan attended the University of Manitoba where he studied English, geology, history, Latin, astronomy, economics, and psychology. After graduating in 1933, McLuhan left for Cambridge University where he studies at Trinity Hall. In 1937, McLuhan converted to Catholicism and according to Janine Marschessault, “the relationship between religion and culture is central to McLuhan’s understanding of the relationship between culture and environment” (Marschessault 37). In rejecting Marx’s view of production as “primarily determinant in social change,” McLuhan replaced it with technological intervention. Meaning that, it is the medium, through communication, that shapes humanity (Marssechault 20).

McLuhan explores the "intervals, oppositions, and interferances between things, the historical shifts and breakages that mark the emergesnce of new civilizations, that will enable us to grasp the indelying community" (Marschessault xiv). He is interested in how meanings are produced and how and why meanings work in a non-linear fashion, but instead cyclical. for instance, "from orality to literacy to oralitty again." Importantly, the orality that returns is not in the older form, but manifested to agree with cultural manifestations (Marschessault xiv). McLuhan examined non-linearity in order to fathom cultural fomations (Marschessault xiv).

[edit] References

Marchessault, Janine. Marshall McLuhan. London: Sage Publications, 2005.