SILS - Spring 2020
HI307
MEDIA HISTORY
Graham Law
Introduction
Two Theorists of Change in Media Systems:
Habermas & McLuhan
Structure of today’s presentation
The contexts: Habermas & McLuhan
– Life & Works
– Points of similarity & difference
The texts: Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere & Understanding Media
– periodization
– concepts
Questions & Discussion
Contexts: Life & Works (1):
Jürgen Habermas Life (1929-date)
– Düsseldorf & era of National Socialism
– Frankfurt School (under Adorno/Horkheimer)
– history and social theory
– writings on modernity, communication, democracy
Key Works – Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962; 1989)
– Toward a Rational Society (1968; 1970)
– Communication and the Evolution of Society (1976; 1979)
– Theory of Communicative Action (1981; 1984-7)
Contexts: Life & Works (2):
Marshall McLuhan Life (1911-1980)
– Toronto School (technology & culture)
– from modern literature
to postmodern media
– media ecology
Early Works – The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951)
– The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962)
– Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)
– The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967)
Contexts: Points of similarity
combination of Continental theory &
Anglo-American pragmatism
intellectual heroes of the 1960s & 1990s
long historical perspective
concern with process of change
Contexts: Points of difference
How is social change viewed?
– Habermas: modernist, rationalist perspective
– McLuhan: postmodernist, relativist perspective
What are the effects of media transformations? – Habermas: socio-political
– McLuhan: socio-psychological
What causes the changes? – Habermas: underlying economic structures
– McLuhan: technological innovation
Are the changes inevitable? – Habermas: No (less deterministic)
– McLuhan: Yes (more deterministic)
Texts: Periodization
Habermas
– pre-capitalist era
– early capitalist era
– late capitalist era
McLuhan
– manuscript era
– print era
– electric (electronic) era
Texts: Concepts
Habermas
– the public sphere
– structural transformation
McLuhan
– extensions of man
– the medium is the message
Habermas: Transformation of the Public Sphere “the public sphere” = “a realm of our social life in which something
approaching public opinion can be formed” [PSEA 49]
“public opinion” = “the tasks of criticism and control which a public
body of citizens … practices vis-à-vis the ruling structure organized in
the form of a state” [PSEA 49]
“In England, France, and the United States the transformation from a
journalism of conviction to one of commerce began … at approximately
the same time.” [PSEA 53]
“When the laws of the market governing the sphere of commodity exchange
and of social labor also pervaded the sphere reserved for private people as a
public, rational-critical debate had a tendency to be replaced by
consumption, and the web of public communication unraveled into acts
of individuated reception ...” [STPS 161]
Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere: an Encyclopedia Article (1964)”,
trans. S. & F. Lennox, New German Critique 3 (Autumn 1974): 49-55
Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere,
trans. T. Burger & F. Lawrence (1962; Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1989)
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McLuhan: From Typographic to Electric Man
“Technological environments are not merely passive containers of
people but are active processes that reshape people … Printing
from movable types created a quite unexpected new environment
… Manuscript technology did not have the intensity or power of
extension necessary to create publics on a national scale. What we
have called “nations” in recent centuries did not, and could not,
precede the advent of Gutenberg technology any more than they
can survive the advent of electric circuitry with its power of
totally involving all people in all other people. ”
The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Intro.
“After 3,000 years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and
mechanical technologies, the Western World is imploding. During
the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today,
after more than a century of electric technology, we have
extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace,
abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.
Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man –
the technological simulation of consciousness …”
Understanding Media (1964), Intro.
Further Reading
On Habermas CALHOUN, Craig, ed,. Habermas and the Public Sphere.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993.
ROSENFELD, M., & A. Arato, eds. Habermas on Law and Democracy.
Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1998.
WHITE, Stephen K., ed. Cambridge Companion to Habermas.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.
On McLuhan GORDON, W. Terrence. Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding.
NY: Basic Books, 1997.
MARCHAND, Philip. Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger.
Boston: MIT Press, 1998.
THEALL, Donald F, ed. The Virtual Marshall McLuhan.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2001.