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Heidegger, Mcluhan, Greenberg The Revenge of the Surface: Heidegger, McLuhan, Greenberg × TEXT: GRAHAM HARMAN Rachel de Joode, A Peanut, Half a Horse, a Chicken Foot, a Burning Cigarette, and a Black Hole, (2011) � × 66 × × 67 × In the introduction to his major work Understanding Media, and finally, we will reach the ironic conclusion that the assault justice to the things no less than theo- A totality of equipment is constituted only the background structure of any Marshall McLuhan reports the following anecdote. One of of these three thinkers against surface content does not suc- retical observation does. Our theoreti- by various ways of the ‘in-order-to,’ medium is of any importance; whatever the editors of his book complained that “seventy-five percent ceed. Content takes its revenge, and becomes the unexpected cal remarks, our scientific discoveries such as serviceability, conduciveness, lies in the foreground is for that very of your material is new. A successful book cannot venture to center of gravity of a thinking still to come. concerning a coniferous tree or a poi- usability, manipulability.”7 What in- reason a pointless distraction. The be more than ten percent new.”1 In view of this advice, my aim sonous snake, are in Heidegger’s view terests me here is not the technical good and the bad, the puritanical and in this lecture is to offer no more than ten percent new mate- necessarily flat and impoverished, sin- terminology, but the quietly fanatical the morally dissolute might equally well rial. Yet I will still risk something, since the remaining ninety 1. Heidegger vs. Content ce the richness of being is concealed assertion that there is no such thing take place in Berlin, yet the difference percent will attempt to depict familiar authors in a new light. As we have already seen, Heidegger was initially viewed as deep beneath the theoretical surface. as “an” equipment. In keeping with between these different cases is not Above all it is a question of McLuhan, the celebrated media the crown prince of the phenomenological movement. The Yet praxis is also a kind of surface. The this rigorous metaphysical holism, the so important in comparison with the theorist, and Martin Heidegger, a philosopher as famous as basic thesis of phenomenology consists in the claim that, in “use” of coniferous trees or poisono- world in itself is an inarticulate lump, barely visible role of Berlin itself. Ac- he is controversial. The imaginary encounter between them principle, everything can be directly given in some way to us snakes (no matter what those uses just like the apeiron of the pre-Socratic cording to McLuhan the same holds for becomes more interesting if we add the American art critic consciousness. There is no concealed thing-in-itself, as we might be) is just as superficial as the philosophers. The multitude of things all media, whether ancient or modern. Clement Greenberg to the discussion. For Greenberg, no less find in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and no independent theoretical articulation of them. Prax- appears to be only a derivative illusion. For this reason McLuhan is too often than Heidegger and McLuhan, is a thinker who privileges substance that only occasionally and accidentally observed. is is not a centimeter closer to the world We are apparently deceived; being itself accused of being a technological deter- depth, as opposed to those admirers of the surface who take Reality consists fundamentally of its accessibility to human than theory is, since neither exhausts is only one. And here we encounter the minist, especially in Great Britain in my too seriously the content of experience. Let’s begin with a consciousness. If something is currently not present to any- the objects they encounter. Praxis no seldom-noted ambiguity of Heidegger’s experience (perhaps due to the strong brief overview of the theme. Why is “content” viewed with one’s mind, then at least it could become present someday. less than theory must always translate, concept of the “ontological difference”: influence of cultural Marxism in that such scorn by all three thinkers? Obviously enough, phenomenology is not a noumenology: caricature, or outright falsify. Correct the difference, so important for his phi- country). In any case, McLuhan’s clear With Heidegger it is a question of his (mostly friendly) the philosopher is no longer interested in anything unknow- representation is forbidden to the han- losophy, between being and beings. On lack of interest in the foreground of ex- criticism of phenomenology. The theoretical breakthrough able, and is only barely interesed in the objects of the natu- dyman no less than to the thinker. the one hand, the ontologcial difference perience, which is evidently the realm of Edmund Husserl around 1900 consisted in renouncing all ral sciences except insofar as they are directly given to us. But a further step is still necessary. means the difference between present of all conscious decision, might give the hidden causes and concealed entities. Instead of giving scien- Yet in any event, phenomenology is partly object-oriented, The reality of trees and snakes is not and absent, veiled and unveiled, conce- impression that we humans are only the tific explanations, we limit ourselves to the exact description since (unlike the British Empiricists) it is less interested in only deeper than all human compor- aled and unconcealed, tool and broken puppets of background forces. We will of our lived experiences. A headache, for instance, should the various properties or qualities of an apple than in the ap- tent, whether theoretical or practical. tool, and so forth. This difference is phi- soon see to what extent this accusation not be reduced to its bodily sources. Instead, it is the task of ple itself as a durable core beneath all swirling and changing The problem is not only that we hu- losophically powerful and, in my opini- against McLuhan simply misses the the philosopher to investigate all such experiences in their apple-appearances. Even so, phenomenology remains a sort mans are so tragic in our traumatic on, describes reality truly. But on the point. smallest details, without appealing to physical causation. Yet of idealism, since for phenomenology “being” means nothing finitude. “Oh, poor human race, that other hand, Heidegger is inclined (even An important impulse for the de- according to Heidegger, this phenomenology is ultimately more than representability for a mind. cannot exhaust hammers-in-themsel- if in taciturn fashion) to interpret the velopment of McLuhan’s media theory impossible, or at least somewhat deceptive. The practice of Heidegger eventually renounced this fundamental idea- ves and trees-in-themselves!”, as if ontological difference as that between came from the pressure of his publisher, phenomenology entails a misunderstanding of the world as a lism of phenomenology completely; or more accurately, he the inanimate matter of physics had one and many. And here is “bad” Hei- who requested a new edition of McLu- mere surface. The Seinsfrage, Heidegger’s famous question reversed it. Beginning in his earliest Freiburg Lecture Course the ability to make direct relation degger, the Heidegger who despises all han’s breakthrough work Understan- of the meaning of being, means that we do not take the pre- in 1919,3 Heidegger developed his famous tool-analysis, which with other pieces of matter. Not at all. specific things as somehow sub-philo- ding Media. In answer to this request, sence-at-hand of the world too seriously, since the being of was first published eight years later in his major work Being As several medieval Islamic theologi- sophical. This is the Heidegger who McLuhan and his son and collaborator beings hides in the depths and Time.4 The basic insight of this analysis is found in Heid- ans already saw early on, there is the uses the word “ontic” as a terrifying Eric invented a beautiful geometrical In the works of McLuhan we repeatedly hear that “the egger’s remark that, for the most part, the things of the world same problem in the relation between insult. But what if being were actual- structure for their theory: the Tetrad.8 medium is the message.” What does this mean? The core pro- are not represented by our minds at any given moment. Mostly two stones as there is between human ly only One? In that case there would This fourfold figure, so characteristic of gram of McLuhan’s media theory is found in the assertion that we fail to notice that the ground beneath our feet is stable, that and stone, dolphin and stone, mon- be no reason for the emergence of the the late McLuhan, consists (like almost the content of any medium is of no importance in comparison our heart-beats continue without interruption, that atmosphe- key and stone, or moss and stone. It multitude of objects, and therefore such all fourfold structures in intellectual with its deep and invisible background. As McLuhan puts it, ric oxygen enables the continuation of our lives, and that the is the greatness of Immanuel Kant to an emergence would presumably never history) of two differing axes. It is a in his typically lively interview in Playboy, the content of any absence of political uproar in the streets makes possible our have grasped the withdrawal of the take place. The simple fact that tools question of the two pairs enhancement/ medium is no more important than the graffiti on the casing calm contemplation of phenomenological ontology. Usually thing-in-itself. Yet he should not have are inclined towards malfunction en- obsolescence and retrieval/reversal. of the atomic bomb.2 The much-debated difference between the life of things is not accessible to us, but hidden, concealed, limited this problem of withdrawal to tails that the tool (and that means eve- What do we learn here about the good and bad television shows is actually pointless.
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