Stevenson, Guy. 2016. 'Disdaining the Tribe: The Anti-Humanist Basis of Marshall McLuhan’s ‘The Medium is the Message'. In: Modernist Studies Association (MSA) Annual Conference. Pasadena, California,, United States 17 - 20 November 2016. [Conference or Workshop Item]

Preview

Text MSA Panel-Modernist McLuhan .pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (77kB) | Preview

Abstract or Description

In the panel’s first paper, “Disdaining the Tribe: The Anti-Humanist Basis of Marshall McLuhan’s ‘The Medium is the Message,’” Guy Stevenson takes the theorist’s friendship with Ezra Pound as a starting point for exploring the Poundian basis of McLuhan’s ideas about language, society and the media. Stevenson’s argument draws our attention to the dialectic of humanist and anti-humanist, of radically inclusionary and retrogressively elitist impulses at the heart of McLuhan’s career defining slogan “the medium is the message.” By pointing to a similar paradox in Pound’s work (particularly in his literary and economic essays of the 1930s), born of the desire for an aesthetics that delineates difference and a politics that abhors it, Stevenson offers a new way of thinking about McLuhan and the ostensibly progressive period he came to represent.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Keywords:	Modernism, Marshall McLuhan, Ezra Pound, Media Theory,
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	English and Comparative Literature
Dates:	Date Event 19 June 2016 Accepted November 2016 Completed
Event Location:	Pasadena, California,, United States
Date range:	17 - 20 November 2016
Item ID:	36778
Date Deposited:	14 Jun 2024 10:57
Last Modified:	14 Jun 2024 11:04
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/36778

View statistics for this item...

Edit Record (login required)