The Practice of Marshall McLuhan Cover Image

Marshallo McLuhano Pratybos
The Practice of Marshall McLuhan

Author(s): Saulius Keturakis
Subject(s): Media studies, Metaphysics, Social Philosophy, Hermeneutics
Published by: Visuomeninė organizacija »LOGOS«
Keywords: communication; media; practical criticism; performance;

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the paper is to explore the causes and sources of the „antitheoretical” way of interpreting media by Marshall McLuhan. In many texts of McLuhan it is possible to find his ideas about limitations of theoretical interpretation of reality. From the point of view of McLuhan the roots of some kind of distrust in the theoretical attitude are related to impossibility of a theory to explore all aspects of research object and to fix a meaning with an object in some stable construct. The famous media theorist has tried media interpretation in a more performative way, rather than interpretative which is related with Cambridge ideas of practical criticism and with his PhD research about Thomas Nashe, who has searched for a way how to enrich the written language for more comprehensive representing of reality. Consequently in the texts by McLuhan the leading role belongs to the character of amateur instead of professional, to the way of speaking in aphorisms instead of scientific style and performance has more importance than analysis. All of them could be summarized as some practice, but in a very specific – linguistic – way, which grounds all quests for defining the media by McLuhan.

  • Issue Year: 2012
  • Issue No: 70
  • Page Range: 59-68
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: Lithuanian