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REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES

IMAGINATIONS JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES | REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE

CONTRIBUTORS

ADAM LAUDER AND JAQUELINE MCLEOD ROGERS Publication details, including open access policy ELENA LAMBERTI and instructions for contributors: ALEXANDER KUSKIS ADINA BALINT http://imaginations.csj.ualberta.ca JESSICA JACOBSON-KONEFALL MAY CHEW DAINA WARREN

TOM MCGLYNN

HENRY ADAM SVEC ISSUE 8-3 KENNETH R. ALLAN Marshall McLuhan and the Arts MOHAMMAD SALEMY

JODY BERLAND ASALMCLUHANAND THE MARSHALL Editorial Team: Brent Ryan Bellamy, Dominique Laurent, Andriko GARY GENOSKO Lozowy, Tara Milbrandt, Carrie Smith-Prei, and Sheena Wilson December 6, 2017 REVUE D’ÉTUDES INTERCULTURELLES DE L’IMAGE JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL IMAGE STUDIES

MARSHALL MCLUHAN

ARTS AND THE ARTS

ISSUE 8-3, 2017

To cite this : Lauder, Adam and Jaqueline McLeod Rogers. “McLuhan and the Arts after the Speculative Turn.” Imaginations 8:3 (2017): Web (date accessed) 5-24. DOI: 10.17742/IMAGE.MA.8.3.1

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.MA.8.3.1

The copyright for each article belongs to the author and has been published in this journal under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 3.0 license that allows others to share for non-commercial purposes the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal. The content of this article represents the author’s original work and any third-party content, either image or text, has been included under the Fair Dealing exception in the Canadian Copyright Act, or the author has provided the required publication permissions. MCLUHAN AND THE ARTS AFTER THE SPECULATIVE TURN

ADAM LAUDER AND JAQUELINE MCLEOD ROGERS

cLuhan and the arts is a well-trod- signifcant advance in our still evolving con- den theme yet surprisingly still fer- ception of McLuhan as a thinker and practi- tile ground for original scholarship tioner of . Mand research-creation. Milestones include ex- cavations by Richard Cavell and Elena Lamber- A notable acceleration in the uptake of McLu- ti of the aesthetic sources of McLuhan’s han’s thought in recent years points to some- analyses in the literature and visual arts of his thing of a mutation in the trajectory of recovery, time as well as his infuence on a range of con- restoration, and revision initiated by the publi- temporary artistic projects, from happenings cation of his Letters in 1987. It has become com- to installation art. Janine Marchessault and monplace to attribute McLuhan’s post-contem- Donald Teall have also presented compelling porary revival to the forces of retrospection portraits of the media thinker as himself an and reassessment focused by centennial cele- artist or “poet-artist manqué” (Teall, Te Me- brations of his birth in 2011. Yet there is more dium 6).1 More recently, case studies of specifc than chronology driving this . artists and movements inspired by McLuhan— notably Kenneth R. Allan’s exploration of Mc- Richard Cavell has recently drawn parallels Luhan’s notion of the “counterenvironment” as between McLuhan’s thought and contempo- a mode of immanent critique practiced by con- rary afect theory and new materialisms. It is ceptualists ranging from Dan Graham to the also not coincidental that McLuhan’s thought Vancouver-based N.E. Ting Co. Ltd.—have experiments have been the object of renewed lent additional defnition and texture to exist- attention amidst the intellectual sea-change ing accounts of the longue durée of McLuhan’s spelled by the speculative turn. While it would infuential percepts. Yet no authoritative sur- be dubious and unfruitful to retrospectively vey of McLuhan’s global impact on contempo- claim McLuhan as a new realist avant la lettre, rary art has emerged to-date. Tis special issue compelling resonances between his trans- of Imaginations does not, and for reasons of gression of disciplinary boundaries and pres- space alone cannot, fll this gap. Nonetheless, ent-day intellectual currents illuminate some the articles and artists’ responses gathered here, of the leading concerns propelling the pres- both collectively and individually, constitute a ent special issue of Imaginations. If the 1990s

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gave us a “virtual” McLuhan who was simulta- “non-philosophy” elaborated by Laruelle that neously a of diference and a fore- comes closest to McLuhan’s non-standard hu- runner of the spatial turn, today the media an- manism and best illuminates the experimental alyst is ripe for reevaluation as the generatively currents propelling this special issue. unclassifable thinker that he is. Laruelle (b. 1937) is Professor Emeritus at the In common with the proponents of various University of Paris X (Nanterre). Of his more Speculative Realisms, McLuhan’s are than 20 monographs, some dating back to the characterized by a profound wariness of the 1970s, English translations have only begun to “Subject” produced by Enlightenment epis- appear since 2010, although they are now be- temologies and conserved, if profoundly re- ing published at a rapid rate by the most distin- confgured, by the linguistic turn which coin- guished academic presses. Laruelle began his cided with the waning of his own reputation career by extending but also hybridizing the afer 1968.2 “Man” may be the unapologetic seemingly incompatible post-structuralist the- subject of McLuhan’s media explorations, yet ories of and Gilles Deleuze. By it is no liberal-humanist individual—no Vit- the early 1980s, however, he was beginning to ruvian Man—that emerges from his collagiste push against these “Philosophies of Diference” prose. Rather, McLuhan presents us with an to formulate his own non-philosophical alter- oddly prosthetic and generic humanity that native (discussed in detail below): a rethink- anticipates the contemporary French think- ing of the central assumptions of continen- er François Laruelle’s provocative contention tal philosophy that nonetheless makes new, if that “there are no longer subjects” (“Is Tink- sometimes unrecognizable and perverse, uses ing Democratic?” 233). Likewise anticipatory of its now-familiar and vocabulary. of Speculative Realism, McLuhan drew upon Some commentators group Laruelle with An- a range of scientifc discourses to expand the glo-American thinkers associated with Specu- scope of humanistic study beyond the con- lative Realism—an afliation that the non-phi- fnes of Greek metaphysics and Judeo-Chris- losopher would likely reject. Nonetheless, tian theology. In particular, McLuhan emerges Laruelle’s project shares with SR an ambition to as a prescient critic of as the master think beyond such hallmarks of French Teory signifer of the human. For the School as the linguistic metaphor and the centrality of thinker, as for contemporary realists, “ontology the Subject utilizing techniques and terminol- is politics” (Bryant, Srnicek, and Harman 16)— ogy derived from science. an orientation made plain by his prefatory pro- fession of faith in “the ultimate harmony of all Like Laruelle, McLuhan is a gnomic thinker being” in (5). who defes standard disciplinary taxonomies and norms. Indeed, McLuhan’s currently ac- Yet McLuhan’s non-Kantianism—derived from cepted designation as a media theorist or me- Henri Bergson, as traced by Stephen Crock- dia philosopher is questionable, not only on er—thwarts any meaningful alignment with the basis of his own of-noted resistance to contemporary neo-Kantians such as Gra- systemization; the Toronto School thinker pre- ham Harman or his noumenal world of “ob- ferred, like Laruelle, an aesthetic and experi- jects.” It is, rather, the eccentric project of mental methodology substituting non-rational

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“percepts” for the concepts of conventional and perspectival alike (Counter- epistemology. Even the default subsumption of blast n.p.). Paralleling the originary “blackness” McLuhan’s protean speculations under the ru- that Laruelle attributes to the Real (thereby re- bric of is debatable, if only giv- jecting standard metaphysical metaphors of il- en his noted lack of training in communica- lumination and enlightenment), McLuhan de- tions and resolutely literary methodology. Like scribed this acoustic space as “the dark of the Laruelle, McLuhan’s project is more accurate- mind” (Counterblast).4 ly characterized as an irreverent bricolage of seemingly irreconcilable methodologies that Moreover, McLuhan’s acoustic space as well as efects a mutation of the central forms of clas- the “” form that he developed to com- sical Western epistemology and its contempo- municate its heteronomous essence (Gutenberg rary ofspring. Galaxy 265) can both be likened to Laruelle’s insistence upon the foreclosure of the Real to Te formal orientation of McLuhan’s analyses epistemological capture: a “One” that unilater- was long dismissed as a methodological short- ally equalizes all attempts at its representation coming, a holdover from the naïve formalism as necessarily incomplete. Laruelle’s universe practiced by an earlier generation of human- establishes an irreversible vector from the Re- ists. Jessica Pressman has persuasively argued al-One to its representations, thereby standing for a recovery of McLuhan’s approach as an in- on their head the pretentions of novative modality of New Critical techniques to transform the Real. McLuhan’s mediatic of close . In light of Laruelle’s trenchant Real is likewise misconstrued as relational. Af- critique of the enduring form of Western phi- ter all, the medium is the : the terms of losophy, however—what he describes as its this most celebrated yet persistently obscure of circular, “decisional” structure (the constantly McLuhan’s axioms being as irreversible as the rearticulated yet functionally invariant dyads variables in Laruelle’s non-philosophical ma- of Subject/object, Idea/representation, One/ trix. Te medium is a vector that only travels in multiple, Being/beings, etc.)—McLuhan’s for- one direction. In other words, content, always mal methodology emerges with renewed rel- inadequate as a description of the medium and evance as a perspicacious excavation of the a secondary to its efects in McLuhan’s writings, prioris of Western epistemology and aesthet- can be likened to Laruelle’s view of philoso- ics. Indeed, there is a strikingly proto-Laruel- phy’s doomed attempts at capturing the Real. lian orientation to McLuhan’s recognition of the dyadic fgure/ground dynamics of typog- Te conficting percepts superposed by Mc- raphy as an artefact of Western rationalism and Luhan’s textual mosaic issue unilaterally from its binary apparatus of subjectivization. Antici- a non-totalizable mediatic Real. His analyses pating the quantum chaos, or chôra, that Laru- thereby unfold “alongside” the blackness of elle opposes to the empirico-transcendental acoustic space in a manner consonant with doublets of philosophy, McLuhan, himself par- Laruelle’s non-philosophical project (Intellec- tially infuenced by developments in quantum tuals and Power 32). Te medium is the message mechanics,3 hypothesized a non-perspectival can also be understood as articulating a form “acoustic space” in contradistinction to the du- of radical immanence; that is, the message does alistic positions structurally inscribed in print not transcend the medium, but is immanent to

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its form. Tis immanental orientation corrob- representational machinery of Platonic episte- orates Donald Teall’s likening of McLuhan’s mologies more generally. thought to that of Deleuze, whose 1968 text Te of infuentially proposed a neo-Sto- Te mannerist theatre staged by McLuhan’s ic reading of the “blank word,” which (like Mc- “non-book” collaborations with designers Luhan’s medium) “says its own sense” (79).5 Quentin Fiore and (Michaels, McLuhan’s maxim equally resounds in Laruel- “Foreword” 8) abounds in quotations and imag- le’s radical deconstruction of Deleuze’s philos- es gleaned from a beguiling gamut of pop-cul- ophy of immanence; the former proposing, in tural and “serious” sources (not to mention the words of John Ó Maoilearca, a thought ca- their incessant paraphrase of McLuhan’s own pable of “doing what we say we do” (45, original earlier, single-authored texts). Precedent for emphasis). What more concise description of such assemblage is found in the ventriloquism McLuhan’s medium than that it, too, says what of mass-media formats (comic-strip, editorial, it does? newspaper) and the high-Modernist prosody performed by Te Mechanical Bride, the me- McLuhan elaborated his prescient critique of dia analyst’s frst monograph. Yet McLuhan’s the dyadic technics of Western thought in a détournement of readymade materials can be performative style that Richard Cavell has pro- traced further back to the anti-Bergsonian (yet, ductively likened to performance art.6 Similar- paradoxically, enduringly Bergsonian) ly, Laruelle has stated that, “what interests me of : the Canadian-born multi- is philosophy as the material for an art” (Mack- media Modernist whose impact on McLuhan ay and Laruelle 29): an aesthetic project that has been analyzed in depth by Lamberti and he characteristically qualifes as non-standard is the subject of the recent anthology Counter- aesthetics. Te mosaic of quotations assembled blasting . by Te Gutenberg Galaxy “clones”—as Laruel- le would say—its philosophical and aesthetic Lewis—whom McLuhan frst read during his reference material through a scriptural redu- doctoral studies at Cambridge in the mid- plication that deliberately contravenes the her- 1930s, and subsequently befriended during meneutic norms of philosophical commentary World War II while lecturing at St. Louis Uni- and interpretation. McLuhan thereby reduces versity and Assumption College (today’s Uni- his chosen objects of study (François Rabelais, versity of Windsor)—was a prominent crit- Peter Ramus, Te Tragedy of King Lear, etc.) to ic of the non-logical metaphysics of Bergson. so many “simple materials” (Laruelle Principles Yet, as SueEllen Campbell and others have of Non-Philosophy 9) or, what he would term demonstrated, Lewis’s anti-Bergsonian po- with Wilfred Watson, “clichés,” stripped of lemic remained perplexingly Bergsonian in their pretentions to transcendent Truth. Tis its mere upending of the driving dualisms of citational procedure—which sets the stage for Bergsonian metaphysics: “matter and memo- Laruelle’s practice of radical paraphrase—pow- ry, and recollection, objective and erfully foregrounds the materiality of print as subjective” (Deleuze, Bergsonism 53). Howev- an instrument of rational thought while simul- er, where Campbell and other commentators taneously exposing and sterilizing the dyadic on Lewis’s fraught relationship to Bergsonian modernisms have tended to view the British

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artist-author’s enduring if covert Bergsonism the constraints of logical consistency, whose as an unwitting inconsistency, it is equally le- “proof” it purported to embody (Counterblast gitimate to recognize in Lewis’s “perverse” (Ed- n.p.). In the post-lineal world inaugurated by wards, “Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticism” 39) Berg- , “[a]ll knowledges are equal” sonism a deliberate logic of paraconsistency. A (Ó Maoilearca 28), just as no representation of similarly heretical reuse of Bergsonian dual- the Real can dominate in Laruelle’s isms in tandem with borrowings from contem- of thought. porary scientifc discourse was made earlier by (see Henderson; Luisetti Much as Laruelle has strategically appropriated and Sharp; Ó Maoilearca), whose para-paint- theoretical material from the neo-Bergsonian erly masterpiece Te Bride Stripped Bare by Deleuze, whose imperative (as paraphrased Her Bachelors, Even (1915-1923) also informed with collaborator Félix Guattari) to “create McLuhan’s Mechanical Bride (see Cavell, Re- concepts” (5) he has divested of its metaphys- mediating McLuhan 50). Much as Duchamp ical impulse, Lewis mimicked Bergson’s meta- seized upon the denigrated mechanical and physics of creative evolution in his 1930 mas- rationalist pole of Bergson’s dualist apparatus terpiece, Te Apes of God. Te latter text stages to enact an unauthorized, and pointedly an- a carnivalesque pageantry of modernist clones ti-vital, reuse of the French vitalist thinker’s mocking the French philosopher’s artistic ac- conceptual apparatus, Lewis, too, can be un- olytes, who are represented as little more than derstood as appropriating Bergson’s popular stereotyped “walking ideas” (Edwards, Wyn- writings as “a whatever material” for unsanc- dham Lewis 320). Occupying the perspectival tioned remediation (Ó Maoilearca 164). Clear- centre of Lewis’s literary vortex is the absentee ing a path for the non-philosophical “clones” philosopher Pierpoint (or “peer-point”) (Mill- of Laruelle as well as the clichés of McLuhan er 117), whose insights are parroted by the den- and Watson, Lewis’s heteroglossia of Bergso- izens of Lewis’s counterfeit “ of creators” nian formulas belongs to a Bergsonian tradi- (Deleuze, Bergsonism 111). Acting as the proto- tion and yet remains defantly non-Bergsonian typical medium, the Virgil-like Horace Zagreus in its divestiture—and, indeed, overt satire—of “broadcasts” (Apes 271, 418, 433, 434) Pierpoint’s the transformational potential of philosophical views via mock-radiophonic performanc- concepts. In McLuhan’s reworking of Lewisian es of the reclusive guru’s “encyclical” (125) as strategies of pastiche, paraconsistency emerg- he guides protagonist Dan Boleyn through a es as a primary characteristic of what he alter- Dantean Bloomsbury. Lewis’s satirical rever- nately termed “post-lineal” or “post-- sal of the dynamics of Bergsonian comedy (as ic” culture: neologisms that are strikingly con- theorized by the French thinker in his pop- sistent with the non-Euclidean model pursued ular Laughter)—which Lewis dubbed by the egalitarian thought of Laruelle in their “non-moral satire” (Men Without Art 107-108) radical expansion and mutation (but not aban- in opposition to the socially corrective func- donment) of the schemata of classical episte- tion that Bergson attributed to the mechanical mology.7 In advance of Laruelle, McLuhan was essence of the comic—can be likened to John drawn to non-Euclidean models of space that Ó Maoilearca’s description of non-philosophy’s liberated humanity from what he dubbed the “mockery of the philosopher’s truth” (176): a “straight-jacket” of the parallel postulate and mockery enacted through a quasi-behaviourist,

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“postual” miming of philosophical positions vocabulary from divergent domains to fabulate (see also Hokenson). Similarly, Teall situated novel thoughts that are real but fctive: not au- the Menippean satire of academic norms prac- thoritative descriptions of the Real but rather ticed by McLuhan’s irrevent non-books with- fctions composed of statements that, however in a tradition of “learned satire” with which confictual or incomplete, are nonetheless real he also connected Lewis (Te Virtual Marshall in themselves. McLuhan 41). A contemporary artist whose work suggests A key point of tension between the non-Berg- compelling analogies with Laruelle’s practice sonian mimicry practiced by both Laruelle of philo-fction is Robert Smithson (1938-1973), and Lewis emerges from the latter’s emphatic whose photo-essays transgress disciplinary anti-humanism, which cannot be reconciled boundaries and protocols to unreliable with the persistence of the Human in non-phi- narratives cannibalizing the work of other cre- losophy. Laruelle insists that the “non-” prefx ators. Te early Smithson text “Entropy and which he appends to his minoritarian practice the New Monuments” is axiomatic in its trans- of thought is in no way synonymous with the formation of a conventional survey of recent negation implied by anti-philosophy. Non-phi- art (in this case, Minimalist sculpture) into a losophy does not aim to overturn or nullify free-ranging meditation on the ineluctable fa- philosophy, but—on the model of non-Eu- tum of an entropic cosmos, weaving referenc- clidean geometry, which accepts the axioms of es to everything from tourist guides to Claude classical geometry yet adds seemingly incom- Lévi-Strauss into a deliberately anti-academic patible postulates thereto—sets out to expand heteroglossia. Smithson’s compulsive fabula- the scope of humanistic study by multiplying tion echoes McLuhan’s reconfguration of the and mutating its disciplinary resources, even “critic as creator” (Cavell, Remediating McLu- at the risk of inconsistency. Te persistence of han 79) through his innovation of the multi- the Human in Laruelle’s thought is framed in modal “essai concrète” (Teall, Te Medium emphatically futural terms, as the open ques- 240). tion of humanity’s “salvation” (Smith, Laruelle 6), a formulation that recalls the future tense “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan,” in which McLuhan cast his prophetic pro- Smithson’s signature 1969 mock-travelogue, nouncements on social and sensorial transfor- reported on a recent tour of the Mexican pen- mations that he associated with the prolifera- insula in a satirically hypertrophied imperson- tion of electronic media. A shared modality of ation of the frst-person narrative conventions science fction is an additional manifestation of embedded that may have been of the two thinkers’ common literary orienta- inspired by the artist’s familiarity with the iron- tion: a re-description of philosophical and ex- ic travel writings of Wyndham Lewis, whom tra-philosophical materials that Laruelle theo- he referred to as his “favorite author” in 1965 rizes (in reference to his own project) as “phi- (qtd. In Crow 37).8 “Incidents of Mirror-Travel” lo-fction.” Refusing to abandon the contents is eminently philo-fctive in its superposition of conventional philosophical discourse, Laru- of its host text—the 19th-century American elle instead “superposes”—an operation trans- travel writer John Lloyd Stephens’s 1843 Inci- planted from quantum physics—concepts and dents of travel in Yucatán—with more dubious

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“histories” of the mythical continents of Atlan- geometry” (127) of these mirrored arrays can tis and Mu by James Churchward and Ignati- be likened to the “matrix” that Laruelle posits us Donnelly. Tis pseudo-scientifc travesty of as the a priori of a (non-)photographic vision Atlantean utopias efects a ludic “revers[al of] preceding the emergence of the technical ap- Platonism” (Deleuze, Logic of Sense 291). paratus of the camera—which, in his account, is only incidental to a longer trajectory of phi- Smithson recounts his temporary installation losophy’s “onto-photo-logical” unfolding (Pho- of “hypothetical continents” along his Yucatán to-Fiction 3).9 Te alternating f ares and mot- itinerary based on the imaginative cartogra- tled obscurity manifested by Smithson’s arrays phies of Churchward and Donnelly: piles of can also be likened to the “blinding of the light seashells or stone conjuring the conjectured of logos by the really blind thought of photog- coastlines of the “lost” landmasses of Lemu- raphy” postulated by Laruelle as a refusal of ria and Mu. In thus materializing a specious the representational metaphysics of Platonism facticity, Smithson manifests a logic of para- (Te 58). As Smithson writes, “mirror consistency anticipatory of Laruelle. “Con- surfaces cannot be understood by reason” (“In- trary to afrmations of nature,” writes Smith- cidents of Mirror-Travel” 124). son, “art is inclined to semblances and masks, it fourishes on discrepancy” (“Incidents of Te non-photographic image theorized by Mirror-Travel” 132). Laruelle as an alternative to the specular op- tics of conventional photographic discourse is “Incidents of Mirror-Travel” simultaneously confoundingly “obscure and black” (Te Con- mobilizes the camera in unconventional ways cept 58). Like the non-photographic “clones” of that clear a path for Laruelle’s discourse on an unrepresentable Real formulated by Laruel- “non-photography” as an instantiation of “vi- le, Smithson’s mirror displacements are, more- sion-in-One,” the French thinker’s term for a over, “empty in general of phenomenological unilateral modifcation of human perception. structures of perception: horizon, feld of con- Photographs accompanying Smithson’s tex- sciousness, fringe and margin, pregnant form tual account of his Yucatán expedition point- (Gestalt), fux, etc.” (Te Concept 102). Te art- edly depart from the formalist conventions of ist superposes mottled or monochromatic mir- a medium then struggling to acquire critical rors with generic stretches of beach or jungle to legitimacy. Smithson’s defantly casual photo- produce not a photographic representation but graphs redirect the reader’s touristic gaze away rather a non-mimetic “clone” of the Real. Te from the expected archaeological monuments phenomenologically void visuality composed portended by the title’s nod to Stephens. Tey by Laruelle’s photographic clones is a “vision- record instead an anti-spectacular invento- in-One”: not a representation of the (non-vi- ry of sites/sights: ephemeral arrays of square sualizable) Real-One, but the manifestation mirrors, or “mirror displacements,” installed of a “specifc relation to the real” (Te Concept by the artist on beaches and the jungle foor. 143, 6). Perversely, these crude grids refuse a specular optics, refecting instead monochromatic ex- Unlike philosophy’s attempts at remaking the panses of sky or dazzling solar fares. Te rig- Real in its own image, Laruelle’s non-philoso- orous constituted by the “broken phy aims at “[a] radical modifcation not of the

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World but of our vision(-in-One) of the World” cites McLuhan’s notion, advanced by Under- (Principles of Non-Philosophy 190). Tis am- standing Media, that cinema generates a “Reel bition, particularly as expressed through the World” (91)—a postulate which we might ret- matrix of non-photography, can be likened to rospectively liken to Laruelle’s discourse on the mediatic and sensorial project of McLu- photo-fction. Inspired by the form as much as han, whose “mosaic” resembles Laruelle’s vi- the content of McLuhan’s , Smithson’s sion-in-One. Both ofer unilateral manifesta- photo-essays do not so much represent a per- tions of the Real’s precession: not an illuminat- vasively mediated world as elaborate intricate ing and specular light on, but an opaque and fctions conjugating photographic and philo- vectorial light through. But what then to make sophical materials. of McLuhan’s frequent designation by commu- nications scholars as a transformation theorist? Another contemporary creator amenable to in- Does not his celebrated re-description of the terpretation through a superposition of McLu- “matching” model inscribed in classical Infor- han’s aesthetic speculations with the non-aes- mation Teory as creative “making” disclose a thetic thought of Laruelle is the former Van- nakedly philosophical pretension (“Environ- couver-based conceptual enterprise, N.E. ment” 118)? Our answer must be no. In com- Ting Co. Ltd. (NETCO, 1966-1978). From its mon with Laruelle, it is our vision of the world 1966 founding by Canadian artist Iain Baxter that McLuhan aims to modify and whose pri- (b. 1936), the fctional was thor- or modifcations he painstakingly historicizes oughly McLuhanite in inspiration. Baxter through case studies of specifc media such as had been early exposed to the media analyst the press. Te Real remains emphati- through his participation in planning the 1965 cally impervious to the mediatic (re-)“making” McLuhan-themed Festival of the Contempo- of McLuhan’s Man. McLuhan’s “medium” is rary Arts at the University of British Colum- not an alienated relation but something clos- bia (UBC), where he was then employed as er to what Laruelle terms a “unilateral duali- an assistant professor. Notes for a “self-inter- ty”: a non-dialectical distance or (non-Kantian) view” delivered at UBC in the spring of 1965 transcendental.10 Tis notion of immanent dis- deploy such McLuhanite terminology as “lin- tance is perhaps most powerfully conveyed by eal,” “mosaic,” and “interplay of media,” the McLuhan’s infuential theorization of the “An- artist proposing that “macluen [sic] says [w]e ti-Environment” (or counterenvironment) must learn to arrange the sensory life in order brought into visibility by the artist, which ex- to… the environment itself as a work of poses habitually unseen aspects of the every- art” (n.p.). In the same year as these initial en- day without thereby negating them. Due to its gagements with McLuhan, Baxter joined forces quantum essence, the vectorial Real is, how- with fellow Washington State University alum- ever, never deterministic, notwithstanding its nus John Friel to form the artists’ collective IT, unidirectional character. which also involved occasional contributions by future NETCO co-president, and Baxter’s Smithson’s familiarity with McLuhan’s the- then wife, Ingrid Baxter (b. 1938; known until ses on media and perception is attested to by 1971 as Elaine Baxter). Anticipating the corpo- direct references in such texts as “A Museum rate authorship of the N.E. Ting Co.—whose of Language in the Vicinity of Art,” where he inhabitation of business frameworks would

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parallel McLuhan’s corporate “de-authoriza- a solo exhibition at the Sonnabend Gallery in tion” of Romantic constructions of the singu- New York (Fig. 2). More than a postmodern lar creator (Cavell, Remediating McLuhan 31)— recognition of pervasive mediation, IT’s clones IT’s products were the work of “more than one dramatize the foreclosure of the Real: trans- mind” (Baxter to Deborah, April 22, 1966). Te forming aesthetic objects into inert material anonymous participants of IT and NETCO si- for disarmingly generic fctions. multaneously portend the “generic” humanity that Laruelle places in tension with the shared “Subject” of humanism and post-structuralism.

Figure 1. IT, Pneumatic Judd, 1965. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row.

Te disorienting familiarity of IT’s stock-in- Figure 2. N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., Dummy Self-Portrait trade was a calculated efect of the collective’s Sculpture, 1971. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row. unconventional methodology of cloning art- In parallel with his involvement in IT, Iain Bax- works by the recognized names in contempo- ter experimented with techniques of non-ver- rary art: from Donald Judd (Fig. 1) to Kenneth bal pedagogy that radicalized McLuhan’s cri- Noland and Claes Oldenburg. IT’s re-perfor- tique of print-based classroom procedure. In- mance of well-known canvases and sculptures corporating found objects gleaned from his ur- pointedly stripped their referents of all aes- ban explorations, Baxter’s lectures at UBC and thetic pretension through an irreverent substi- later at (SFU) mimed tution of non-art materials betokening the ge- a choreography of generic actions (such as neric textures of everyday life under late cap- “swimming on dry land,” Fig. 3) to a rigorous- italism for the transcendent realms of formal ly abstract soundtrack of and Edgar autonomy or self-referentiality attributed to Varèse (see Baigell and Smith 370). Tese in- their prototypes by critics and art . terventions mounted a dramatic challenge to Tis cloning procedure would realize its apo- scriptural epistemology inspired by McLuhan’s gee only afer IT was subsumed within NET- audile-tactile speculations and incorporating CO’s cunning “COP” (or Copy) Department Edward T. Hall’s insights on non-verbal com- when, in 1971, the co-presidents appeared as munication (which, signifcantly, also served as “dummies,” or clones of themselves, as part of a point of departure for McLuhan’s extension

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). In Laruellian terms, non-verbal teach- an indirect product of Baxter’s involvement ing constituted a “postural” thought in which, in crafing a McLuhan-inspired “panaesthetic to quote John Ó Maoilearca, “ideas are turned grammar” of the arts at SFU (Schafer, “Clean- into behavior” (144). Te embodied “stance” ing” 10). (Laruelle, Te Concept 12) that Baxter’s McLu- han-inspired non-verbal pedagogy substituted NETCO was established as a transdisciplinary for the logical content of conventional teaching “umbrella” (Baxter, “Interview”) for the manu- served as a gateway to the sensorial informa- facture of a diversifed product line envisioned tion products subsequently manufactured by as varieties of what company personnel termed the N.E. Ting Co.—the company itself being “Sensitivity ”: Sound Sensitivity In- formation, or SSI (“music, poetry [read], sing- ing, oratory, etc.”), Moving Sensitivity Infor- mation, or MSI (“movies, dance, mountain climbing, track, etc.”), Experiential Sensitivity Information, or ESI (“theatre, etc.”), and Visual Sensitivity Information, or VSI (“a term devel- oped and used by the N.E. Ting Co. to denote more appropriately the of the tradi- tional words ‘art’ and ‘fne art’ or ‘visual art’”) (“Glossary” n.p., Fig. 4). Te company’s disci- pline-defying inventory and sensorial taxon- omy resonated with the eforts of Baxter and fellow SFU faculty—notably composer and “soundscape” theorist R. Murray Schafer—to forge an interdisciplinary curriculum at the non-credit Centre for and the Arts fueled by McLuhan’s non-Kantian hy- bridization of media and disparate disciplinary knowledges. Positioning themselves as peda- gogues-at-large, the company’s co-presidents identifed as public “educators of the ” (Fleming 37). Sensitivity Information products generated by company researchers through their interactions with the environment were registered utilizing NETCO’s proprietary glos- sary of -like Sensitivity Information ac- ronyms (listed above), sometimes assuming the form of absurd formulae mocking the structuralist drive to mathematize knowledge. Tese were inscribed on generic “information Figure 3. Iain Baxter, Non-Verbal Teaching (“Swimming on Dry Land”), ca. forms,” designed by “Director of Information” 1964-1966. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row. Brian Dyson to serve as an infnitely extensible

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corporate archive. Te greater part of these in- abstract drawings manifest “blind” transcrip- formation forms documented the generic in- tions of musical performances, their seem- frastructure of suburbia. Sitting somewhere ingly random marks functioning somewhat between a conventional photo album and a akin to a “seismograph” (Galloway, Laruelle McLuhanesque blueprint for im- 163). NETCO’s registrations of Sensitivity In- age-sharing sites, the 1978 compendium of in- formation comprise analogously non-mimetic formation forms, N.E. Ting Co. Ltd., Vol. 1, an- inscriptions of “afect and its intensity” (Laru- ticipates Mohammad Salemy’s recent likening elle, “La plus haute 144), having similarly de- of Instagram to the generic properties of Laru- veloped in dialogue with musical performance elle’s non-photography. (in NETCO’s case, R. Murray Schafer’s compu-

Figure 4. N.E. Thing Co. Ltd., “Glossary,” 1966. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row.

Te Company’s mock-psychophysical tran- tational reimagining of conventional musical scriptions of its corporate operations can be notation as a record of”exact frequencies” as likened to the “economy of pure force” re- well as Iain Baxter’s redeployment of Cage and corded by the oeuvre of August von Briesen Varèse within the context of his own gestural in Laruelle’s perspicacious reading (“La plus experiments in non-verbal teaching) (Schafer, haute” 144). Trough a process akin to Surreal- Te New Soundscape 3). Von Briesen’s blind ist modalities of automatic writing, or the tech- inscriptions of musical performance manifest niques of psychophysical registration, or invol- an audible-tactile Real comparable, moreover, untary “writing down” (304), studied by Ger- to the acoustic space constituted by NETCO’s man media theorist , Briesen’s

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McLuhan-inspired corporate archive of Sensi- interplay, between McLuhan and , tivity Information. the Romanian-born Canadian artist who passed away in 2014. In 1975, Etrog’s experi- Te intention of this admittedly somewhat per- mental flm Spiral was shown at McLuhan’s verse Laruellian reading of McLuhan and his Centre for Culture and , trigger- artistic respondents is not to impose a false im- ing the collaborative publication based on that age of McLuhan as non-philosopher but, rath- movie, Spiral. Images from the , published er, to claim him as “material” for novel thought in 1987. Lamberti teases out Dadaist elements experiments that de-authorize canonical por- in Etrog’s montage, indicating how their as- traits of the media analyst, thereby opening up sault on familiarity and conformity appealed his percepts to new possibilities for non-stan- to McLuhan and inspired his proposal to select dard usage. Without applying a Laruellian lens stills and match them with a free-form text of per se, the articles assembled by this special is- quotations from various writers as well as orig- sue are exemplary demonstrations of just such inal commentary. a performative approach to McLuhan. Togeth- er, they constitute an appropriately fractalized Lamberti points out that McLuhan himself image of the media analyst and his contested can be understood as an artist who made a legacy. conscious shif from modernist avant-garde to neo-avant-gardes and the art forms of the While they examine new territory and are 1970s. Apart from rounding out the record wide-ranging in focus and methodology, the of McLuhan’s oeuvre by bringing this less- articles in this volume are assembled accord- er-known project to light, Lamberti also pays ing to likenesses of theme and approach. Te homage to Etrog and his contribution to the frst two examine McLuhan’s interactions with Canadian artistic renaissance. artists he knew, his contemporaries Sorel Etrog and P. Mansaram. Te next two identify points Te story of McLuhan and Mansaram provides of continuity between McLuhan’s perspectives a friendly and productive biographical ani- and contemporary work as well as points re- mation of a Joycean phrase favoured by Mc- quiring adjustment and amendment, particu- Luhan: “the West shall shake the East awake” larly in relation to Indigenous knowledge. Fol- (Understanding Media 236). Alexander Kuskis lowing these are two studies by artists who describes the dialogue between McLuhan and adapt McLuhan’s ideas in their own work. Te Mansaram begun when Mansaram arrived remaining four articles are theory-oriented, from India to establish himself in Toronto. Mc- each sounding McLuhan’s insights for reso- Luhan was interested in easternisms, and dis- nances with current critical engagements. covered in Mansaram and his art a primary and informing source. Coming early in this Both artists featured as McLuhan associates in volume, this article serves as a felicitous point the frst two articles were newcomers to Cana- of departure by introducing a number of ref- da, whose art refects their encounter with the erences foundational to McLuhan’s art theo- culture of Toronto as fresh and strange. Elena ry. For example, Kuskis reveals several places Lamberti animates a lesser-known collabora- where McLuhan developed his equation of art tion that expands our sense of fgure-ground with national security by linking art to Distant

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Early Warning (DEW Line) signals, under- the key role of the artist as McLuhan saw it— scoring how, for him, the artist fulflls a so- to explain the environment, both human and cial or civic calling, being both “defensive and human-made, from a stance at once atemporal prophetic.” and situated in space.

Kuskis’s close reading of a McLuhan-inspired Jessica Jacobson-Konefall, May Chew, and collage, Rear View Mirror 74, reveals how mon- Daina Warren analyze Cree artist Cheryl L’Hi- tage and mosaic are complementary in be- rondelle’s multidisciplinary art work nikamon ing fragmentary, co-authored, and multi-per- ohci askiy (songs because of the land), a piece spectival. Kuskis also exhumes the collabora- that began as a technologically-recorded per- tive process of making: McLuhan hand-wrote formance of L’Hirondelle’s walks through Van- several text passages onto the collage canvas, couver spaces in 2006 and endures as an penciling in excerpts from sources he found interactive website. Tey present this work compelling in literature and life. Tere is also a as an example of how Indigenous artists use photograph of McLuhan mid-collage, taken by digital media to explore their relation to the Mansaram and paying direct homage to Mc- land—a relationship divergent from that of Luhan as inspiration. While McLuhan is fre- non-Indigenous colonizers with cultivated re- quently cast as artist in this volume, this arti- liance on media as tool extensions. In place of cle provides a concrete instance of his aesthetic roads cutting through land and settlements as- activity. serting property rights and ownership, L’Hi- rondelle’s art draws on a tradition of movement Speaking as a theorist grounded in French and pathways of Indigenous ancestors across the Québécois tradition, Adina Balint draws on land of North America. Te authors argue that several of McLuhan’s key concepts to reveal in Indigenous art, content is more important how they remain vital to the interests and prac- than form or medium, and that media are tools tices of three contemporary Canadian artists. adopted by First Nations artists for purposes of She also demonstrates how they can serve as circulation and engagement. critical tools and vocabulary illuminating our understanding of three recent exhibitions of For both contemporary artists represented their art: Vision trouble, Our Land: Contempo- here, McLuhan provides theoretical precedent rary Art from the Arctic, and Superimposition: and kinship. In his artist’s statement, Tom Mc- Sculpture and Image. Tese shows share a cen- Glynn complicates subject/object relations he tral drive to explore the interaction of percep- identifes in the medium of photography and tion, experience, and media, and she identifes in his photographic work as related to McLu- four characteristics that for McLuhan distin- han’s understanding of the photograph as both guished our encounter with art: an appeal to real and mediated. McGlynn links his decision the senses, viewer engagement, the creation of to photograph incomplete worlds—“partial in- relationships, and recognition of the unseen or stantiations”—to McLuhan’s concept of the hu- complexity that exceeds what can be perceived man encounter with external reality as being in everyday experience. Although Balint does one of self-imposed limitation and incomple- not urge this connection, readers might want tion. He accepts what he takes to be McLuhan’s to consider how these artists are performing challenge to avoid narrowing our gaze and our

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sensory lives by categorizing and naming, in- to be perceived as gnomic guru, and avoided stead being receptive to perceptual shifs and publishing a retrospective guide to assist the environmental change. McGlynn points out audience navigate his work via a script redact- that the photograph, for McLuhan, changed ed to impose a particular form of consistency. our relation to the object world, allowing the It is this commitment to the play and refusal individual holding the camera to capture a to break the spell by imposing temporal con- view of reality at once detailed and holistic— straints that Svec admires as precedent-setting yet at the same time, one limited by the pho- in his own hoax work. tographer’s selective focus. He says that the ob- jects he presents in his photographs should be Te fnal four essays ofer theoretical examina- understood as having lives of their own, and tions of McLuhan’s work that resonate with ele- also as subjects of his composing. ments of the speculative turn—its materialism and realism, its rethinking of historicism, and In “L(a)ying with Marshall McLuhan: Me- its de-emphasis of the Subject through an en- dia Teory as Hoax Art,” Henry Adam Svec’s gagement with the non-human (animal). artist response examines media theory and hoax from his dual as trained me- Ofering a longue durée of the “counterenvi- dia theorist and hoax performance artist who ronment,” Kenneth Allan places McLuhan’s has engaged in several projects that chase the concept in relation to the other and prior ex- question “wouldn’t it be fun if ?” He invokes pressions of “defamilarization” in art theory Innis as an iconic “scholarly persona” whom and practice, helping us to see shifs and con- he plays of against, and fnds fellowship with tinuities amongst users of this concept. While McLuhan, who was both performer and trick- he does not dismiss the ways in which McLu- ster—what Lamberti refers to in this volume as han put his signature on the idea, particularly a “sham” artist, a concept which, like Svec, she in his response to the media environment of employs to refer to his practice of de-center- his cultural moment, Allan is interested in the ing and de-familiarizing assumed patterns and broader contours of defamiliarization—its at practices with the grace of humour and even least 200-year history—and reminds us not to a measure of self-deprecation. Svec cites Glen “imagine that the idea emerges out of no- Wilmot’s description of McLuhan as consum- where in the many instances of its appearance.” mate mask-wearer, increasingly adept at the He provocatively links defamiliarization to the “put on.” In Svec’s assessment, McLuhan main- phenomenon of institutional critique, which tained agency and controlled his performative probed the silent power of cultural , persona, combatting forces of media exploita- fipping the silent ground of institutional space tion by crafing his image in deliberately staged into force felds shaping human attention and performances. Whereas a common trope of agency. By locating McLuhan’s use and devel- hoax art is the ultimate “reveal,” where the per- opment of the term within a historical context, formance culminates in a clarifying statement Allan paradoxically reveals the extent to which by the artist, Svec notes that McLuhan was en- McLuhan’s formulation was timely and origi- tirely committed to the performative rhetori- nal—a perspective that resonates with contem- cal process of lobbing probes to excite audience porary reassessments of historicism. engagement or participation; he was willing

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Mohammad Salemy recuperates a signifcant interchange and assemblage which instantiate , the frst global satellite feed of the notion that all forms and species are eco- a news show, BBC’s Our World (1967), which logically interdependent and co-evolving. united an “estimated 500 million viewers in 24 countries” spatially and temporally. Salemy Several recent theorists have employed afect theorizes this form of “televisual intersubjec- theory to diferentiate humanity from the ma- tivity” as a new way of experiencing reality and chine world—Berland suggests that this theo- time, with “accessible liveliness made a medi- ry may help move us beyond simply conceding ated experience almost as tangible, real and au- that we have entered an ever-accelerating loop thoritative as any physical encounter with the of exchange between humans and technology. world.” He diferentiates this perspective from It should be remembered that McLuhan em- a Benjaminian understanding of temporali- phasized feeling as a key ingredient of the Hu- ty grounded in phenomenological experience, man, arguing that media amputations can in- which flters present through past. He argues duce narcosis. By contrast, animals assist us in that for McLuhan virtuality adds another di- feeling and even remind us of our losses: “the mension—a “technologized intersubjective pleasure and anxiety of witnessing the merg- temporality,” which “includes ’ ing of bodies, technologies, and nonhuman impacts on our understanding of that entity species.” While McLuhan never made this ar- and of time itself.” Salemy establishes the im- gument, Berland is likely accurate in thinking portance of Our World as a media event, re- it is not one he would have opposed; namely, producing the transcript of the interview with that we are implicated in animal and plant life, McLuhan featured as part of the Canadian seg- which, like the human world, is also caught up ment in which McLuhan explores themes in- in processes of machinic change. By examining cluding space/time acceleration, participato- ourselves from a non-human perspective, we ry engagement, and media history. According can respect animals’ struggles and experienc- to Salemy, McLuhan emerges from this media es and potentially reconceive our own position event as an ahistoric mediator. within a shared ecology.

Introducing the lens of critical animal stud- Contributing to the media-archaeological ies, Jody Berland urges us to revise our under- project of unearthing lesser-known fgures and standing of McLuhan as a devoted humanist, materialities, Gary Genosko examines Harley arguing that McLuhan’s theory of extensions Parker’s productive collaborations with fgures irrevocably moved away from anthropocentr- other than McLuhan. Genosko presents the icism toward a posthumanist perspective her- relatively unknown and still contested history alding a nature/culture intersection. She notes of Flexitype—whose creation he attributes to that McLuhan was not only interested in me- Allan Fleming (who engineered the technolo- dia assemblage and machinic nature, but also gy) and to Harley Parker (who pioneered ex- in the broader environment and how it shapes perimental and creative applications)—to re- “our participation in a common situation.” Tis veal the confuence of design innovation in is where animal lives play a role: Berland ar- late-1950s Toronto. Genosko also examines gues that McLuhan’s theory indirectly opens links between father and son, tracing how Har- the door to new forms of human/machine ley and son Blake Parker both experimented

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with the intensities of sensory experience and Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning contributed to installation and performance of the Comic. 1911. Translated by Cloudesley Brere- art. ton and Fred Rothwell, Green Integer, 1999.

Tis fnal essay explores how print-making Betts, Gregory, Paul Hjartarson, and Kristine Smit- processes contributed to the production of ka, editors. Counterblasting Canada: Marshall Mc- “non-books”—monographs conceived and con- Luhan, Wyndham Lewis, Wilfred Watson, and Sheila Watson. U of P, 2016. structed to disrupt the systematized and lin- ear Gutenberg format. As Genosko observes, “such books may be analyzed as quasi-acoustic Bryant, Levi, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman. spaces, unbound from sound, remaking read- “Towards a Speculative Philosophy.” Te Speculative ing and repositioning the reader, injecting am- Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Edited by , Nick Srnicek, and Graham Harman, bivalence and retaining tactility and inviting re.press, 2011, pp. 1-18. multi-sensory participation.” Te mosaic-like non-book format pioneered by McLuhan and Campbell, SueEllen. Te Enemy Opposite: Te Out- collaborators sets a compelling precedent for law Criticism of Wyndham Lewis. Ohio University the fractalized form and content of the pres- Press, 1988. ent volume. Cavell, Richard. McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geog- raphy. U of Toronto P, 2002. Works Cited ___. Remediating McLuhan. Amsterdam UP, 2016. Allan, Kenneth R. “Marshall McLuhan and the Counterenvironment: ‘Te Medium is the Massage.’” Churchward, James. Te Lost Continent of Mu. 1931. Art Journal, vol. 73, no. 4, 2014, pp. 22-45. Paperback , 1968.

Baigell, Matthew, and Joel Smith. “Happening in the Crocker, Stephen. Bergson and the Metaphysics of Classroom: Non-Verbal Art Instruction.” Art Jour- Media. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. nal, vol. 25, no. 4, 1966, pp. 370-71. Crow, Tomas. “Cosmic Exile: Prophetic Turns in Baxter, Iain. “Self-interview.” 1965. Box 4, fle 7. Iain the Life and Art of Robert Smithson.” Robert Smith- Baxter& Fonds, E.P. Taylor Research Library and son. Edited by Eugenie Tsai et al., U of California P, Archives, Toronto, ON. Typescript. 2004, pp. 32-74.

Baxter, Iain, to Deborah. April 22, 1966. Box 6, fle Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. 1966. Translated by 6. Iain Baxter& Fonds, E.P. Taylor Research Library Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Zone and Archives, Toronto, ON. Typescript. Books, 1988.

Baxter, Ingrid. “Interview.” 2009, http://vancouver- ___. Te Logic of Sense. 1969. Translated by Mark artinthesixties.com/interviews/ingrid-baxter. Ac- Lester with Charles Stivale, Continuum, 1990. cessed 8 Aug. 2017. Web.

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Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. What is Philoso- ___. “A Light Odyssey: La découverte de la lumière phy? Columbia UP, 1991. comme problème théorique et esthétique.” Le Con- fort Moderne, 1991. Donnelly, Ignatius. Atlantis: Te Antediluvian World. 1882. Dover, 1976. ___. “Of Black Universe in the Human Foundations of Color.” Hyun Soo Choi: Seven Large-Scale Paint- Edwards, Paul. Wyndham Lewis: Painter and Writer. ings. Translated by Miguel Abreu, Tread Waxing Yale UP, 2000. Space, 1991, pp. 2-4.

___. “Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticism: A Strange Syn- ___. Philosophies of Diference: A Critical Introduc- thesis.” Te Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World. tion to Non-Philosophy. 1986. Translated by Rocco Edited by Mark Antlif and Vivien Greene,Tate, Gangle, Continuum, 2010. 2010, pp. 35-45.

___. “Is Tinking Democratic? Or, How to Introduce Fleming, Marie L. Baxter2: Any Choice Works. Art Teory into Democracy.” Laruelle and Non-Philos- Gallery of , 1982. ophy. Edited by John Mullarkey and Anthony Paul Smith, Edinburgh UP, 2012, pp. 227-37.

Galloway, Alexander R. Laruelle: Against the Digital. U of Minnesota P, 2014. ___. Photo-Fiction, a Non-Standard Aesthetics. Trans- lated by Drew S. Burk, Univocal, 2012. Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Relat- ___. Principles of Non-Philosophy. 1996. Translated by ed Works. Princeton UP, 1998. Nicola Rubczak and Anthony Paul Smith, Blooms- bury Academic, 2013. Hokenson, Jan Walsh. “Comedies of Errors: Berg- son’s Laughter in Modernist Contexts.” Understand- ___. Intellectuals and Power: Te Insurrection of ing Bergson, Understanding Modernism. Edited by the Victim; François Laruelle in with Paul Ardoin, S.E. Gontarski, and Laci Mattison, Philippe Petit. 2003. Translated by Anthony Paul Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, pp. 38-53. Smith, Polity, 2014.

Kittler, Friedrich A. Discourse Networks 1800/1900. Translated by Michael Metteer with Chris Cullens. ___. Te Concept of Non-Photography. Translated by Stanford UP, 1990. Robin Mackay, Urbanomic/Sequence, 2015.

Lamberti, Elena. Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic: Prob- Lewis, Wyndham. Men Without Art. Russell & Rus- ing the Literary Origins of Media Studies. U of To- sell, 1930. ronto P, 2012. ___. Te Apes of God. 1930. Penguin, 1965. Laruelle, François. “La plus haute des contempla- tions.” Réfexions philosophiques sur l’oeuvre d’August ___. A Soldier of Humor and Selected Writings. Edited v. Briesen. Fondation Brandenburg-Neumark, 1985, by Raymond Rosenthal, Signet, 1966. pp. 141-73.

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___. Journey into Barbary. 1932. Edited by C. J. Fox, imental Paperback. Editing by Jefrey T. Schnapp Black Sparrow, 1983. and Adam Michaels, Princeton Architectural Press, 2012.

Luisetti, Federico, and David Sharp. “Refections on Miller, Tyrus. Late Modernism: Politics, Fiction, and Duchamp: Bergson Readymade.” Diacritics, vol. 38, the Arts Between the World Wars. Un of California no. 4, 2008, pp. 77-93. P, 1999.

Mackay, Robin, and François Laruelle. “Introduc- Molinaro, Matie, Corrine McLuhan, and William tion: Laruelle Undivided.” From Decision to Heresy: Toye, editors. Letters of Marshall McLuhan. Oxford Experiments in Non-Standard Tought. Edited by UP, 1987. Robin Mackay, Urbanomic, 2012, pp. 1-32.

N.E. Ting Co. Ltd. “Glossary.” 1966. box 5, fle 11. Marchessault, Janine. Marshall McLuhan: Cosmic Iain Baxter& Fonds, E.P. Taylor Research Library Media. Sage, 2005. and Archives, Toronto, ON. Typescript.

McLuhan, Marshall. Counterblast. s.n., 1954. ___. N.E. Ting Co. Ltd., Vol. 1 . Vancouver: N.E. Ting Co. Ltd., 1978. ___. “Te Analogical Mirrors.” Te Kenyon Review, vol. 6, no. 3, 1944, pp. 322-32. Ó Maoilearca, John. All Toughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy. U of Minnesota P, 2015. ___. Te Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. Vanguard Press, 1951. Pressman, Jessica. Digital Modernism: Making It New in . Oxford UP, 2014. ___. Te Gutenberg Galaxy: T e Making of Typo- graphic Man. U of Toronto P, 1962. Salemy, Mohammad. “Instagram as Non-Photogra- phy.” Tird Rail, vol. 1, 2013, pp. 33-36. ___. Understanding Media: Te Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill, 1964. Schafer, R. Murray. “Cleaning the Lenses of Percep- tion.” artscanada, vol. 25, no. 4, 1968, pp. 10-12. ___. “Art as Anti-Environment.” Art News Annual, vol. 31, 1966, pp. 55-57. ___. Te New Soundscape. BMI Canada, 1969.

___. “Environment as Programmed Happening.” Smith, Anthony Paul. Laruelle: A Stranger Tought. Knowledge and the Future of Man: An International Polity, 2016. Symposium. Edited by Walter J. Ong, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. Smithson, Robert. “A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art.” 1968. Robert Smithson: Te Collect- McLuhan, Marshall, and Wilfred Watson. From Cli- ed Writings. Edited by Jack Flam, U of California P, ché to . Viking, 1970. 1996.

Michaels, Adam. “Foreword.” Te Electric Informa- tion Age Book: McLuhan/Agel/Fiore and the Exper-

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___. “Entropy and the New Monuments.” 1966. Rob- 2 “McLuhan found himself at odds with the reg- ert Smithson: Te Collected Writings. Edited by Jack nant theories of his time, especially the linguistic Flam, U of California P, 1996, pp. 10-23. metaphor that informed structuralism, post-struc- turalism and deconstruction” (Cavell, Remediating ___. “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan.” McLuhan 10). 1969. Robert Smithson: Te Collected Writings. Edit- ed by Jack Flam, U of California P, 1996. 3 “McLuhan particularly invoked the new phys- ics as support for his critique of visual space, draw- Teall, Donald F. Te Medium is the Rear View Mir- ing on Heisenberg’s use of the term ‘resonance’ in ror: Understanding McLuhan. McGill-Queen’s UP, his account of quantum mechanics to argue in Te 1971. Gutenberg Galaxy that the random state in physics was cognate with the auditory domain” (Cavell, Re- ___. Te Virtual Marshall McLuhan. McGill-Queen’s mediating McLuhan 93). UP, 2001. 4 “In the beginning there is Black” (Laruelle, “Of Image Notes Black Universe” 2; see also Galloway, “Te Black Universe”; Laruelle, “A Light Odyssey”). Figure 1. IT, Pneumatic Judd, 1965. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row. 5 McLuhan’s immanental orientation can also be traced to Scotist elements in the writings of James Figure 2. N.E. Ting Co. Ltd., Dummy Self-Portrait Joyce, also noted by Teall (see Te Virtual Marshall Sculpture, 1971. Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven McLuhan 74). An early infuence on McLuhan was Row. the neo-Scotist Catholic poet Gerard Manley Hop- kins (see McLuhan, “Te Analogical Mirrors”). Figure 3. Iain Baxter, Non-Verbal Teaching (“Swim- ming on Dry Land”), ca. 1964-1966. Courtesy Iain 6 “McLuhan, by mid-career…increasingly sought Baxter& and Raven Row. to address himself to artists and, more radically, to be understood as an artist himself” (Cavell, Remedi- Figure 4. N.E. Ting Co. Ltd., “Glossary,” 1966. ating McLuhan 79). Courtesy Iain Baxter& and Raven Row. 7 “[M]odelling the name ‘non-philosophy’ on an Notes analogy with ‘non-,’ Laruelle proposes a broadened, pluralistic science of thought 1 “McLuhan obviously is, as he himself declared, and philosophy as well as a major reworking of phil- not a philosopher, a theorist, or a traditional scien- osophical concepts” (Ó Maoilearca, All Toughts Are tist…but rather an artist playing with percepts and Equal 8). afects” (Teall, Te Virtual Marshall McLuhan 13). “We can read [McLuhan] as an artist who creates 8 Smithson’s personal library, preserved today with tools that foreground the ethics of refexive method- his papers at the Archives of American Art, con- ologies” (Marchessault, Marshall McLuhan xix). tains a Signet paperback anthology of Lewis’s writ- ings that includes excerpts from his 1932 Moroccan

ISSUE 8-3, 2017 · 23 MCLUHAN AND THE ARTS AFTER THE SPECULATIVE TURN

travelogue, Filibusters in Barbary (see Lewis, A Sol- 10 “We call ‘unilateral duality’ or ‘dual’ the identity dier of Humor, Journey into Barbary). without-synthesis of a duality where identity is as- sumed by the frst term or more precisely its clone, 9 “Well before the invention of the corresponding not by the second, and duality by the second alone technology, a veritable automatism of photograph- and not by the frst” (Laruelle, Principles of Non-Phi- ic repetition traverses western thought” (Laruelle, losophy 130, original emphasis). Photo-Fiction 2).

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