1.28 - 1.37


Proxemics and Prosthetics


1.28


Etymology comes to the rescue.  Relying on the Latin term translatio, McLuhan insists that it is in the nature of metaphor to move and metaphor is unavoidable (n7)  and likewise, is constant extension.

1.28

1.29


Bolstered by etymology, McLuhan's conception of metaphor tends to tautology:  an extension is a translation is a metaphor is an artefact is an extension.  McLuhan does characterize the arena of technological development as a closed system (Gutenberg Galaxy 5).  The constraining circularity confirms the implied determinism.  Since it locks the domain of techne into that of logos, it also can vouchsafe the privileged position of the artist.  In particular, poets as wordsmiths offer vis-a-vis new technologies emulatable attitudes.  As McLuhan explains in From Cliché to Archetype, in their capacity as technicians of the word, poets are capable of recuperating and refurbishing old means and meanings.

1.29

1.30


By combining a cyclical view of technological extension with an expressive theory of language, McLuhan deflects the difficulties posed by any consideration of the role social organization plays in the mediation between language and technology.  This is particularly evident when the extension analogy is accompanied by the onomatopoeia "outering/uttering".  Technology like speech arises magically, inevitably.  In McLuhan's universe discursive dilation is akin to technological expansion.  However the kinship does not explain the premise of an uncontrollable urge to speech.

1.30

1.31


Again, rhetorical analysis explains much in McLuhan's moves.  Puns, etymologies and their similar operations are examined by Jean Paulhan who outlines the generation of proof by etymology as follows:  attention to sound without regard to meaning;  discovery of a neglected meaning;  projection of discovered meaning as the origin and the common bond of words so processed (La Preuve 72-73).  Ironically McLuhan confounds etymology with aetiology (n8). 

1.31

1.32


Outering and uttering bespeak another pair:  transformation and transmission.  The play of prefixes and the implicit etymologies involved affirm a link subtending McLuhan's notion of extension, a link between communication and creation.  In Understanding Media, he writes "just as a metaphor transforms and transmits experience so do the media" (59).

1.32

1.33


The storage function of language, McLuhan derives from Leslie A. White.  Its power to alter reality is a commonplace that he himself refigures.  Discontinuity (n9),   speed (n10),  competition (n11),  mark McLuhan's thinking about the transformation of experience.  None of these concepts are in the passage from White that McLuhan draws upon.  Indeed in White experience implies sharing and continuity.  Like J.Z. Young he narrates the evolution from trial and error learning to reasoning:

Man began his career as an anthropoid who was just learning to talk.  He was distinguished from all other animal species by the faculty of articulate speech.  It was this faculty which transformed the discontinuous, non-accumulative, non- progressive process of tool-using among the anthropoids into a continuous, cumulative and progressive process in the human species.  Articulate speech transformed also, the social organization of this gifted primate, and by the inauguration of co- operation as a way of life and security, opened the door to virtually unlimited social evolution.  And, finally, language and speech made it possible for man to accumulate experience and knowledge in a form that made easy transmission and maximum use possible. [our emphasis] (White 240))

Prefacing it by a remark about language as tool McLuhan incorporates only the portion italicized above into his discourse on transformation and transmission.

1.33

1.34


Through language all things are possible, for McLuhan.  Transformation is but the alternation of storage and retrieval hence transmission is transformation.  Humans are said to "possess an apparatus of transmission and transformation based on [their] power to store experience.  And [their] power to store, as in language itself, is also a means of transformation of experience" (Gutenburg Galaxy x).

1.34

1.35


From Cliché to Archetype is devoted to this dynamic.  Just as the dynamic of storage and retrieval rings the tones of Augustine's solution to the problem of free will and determination, so the omnipotence accorded language echoes the mystery of a word made flesh (n12): 

Language is a technology which extends all of the human senses simultaneously.  All the other human artifacts are, by comparison, specialist extensions of our physical and mental faculties.  Written language at once specializes speech by limiting words to one of the senses.  Written speech is an example of such specialism, but the spoken word resonates, involving all the senses. (Cliché 20-21)


1.35

1.36


Like Donne, Traherne and Herbert, authors treated in Rosalie Colie's work on Renaissance paradox, a work upon which McLuhan relies extensively for From Cliché to Archetype, he comes close to identifying creator with created.  The paradoxes of negative theology figured in the English poetic tradition inform McLuhan's understanding of acoustic space in (Laws of Media 102).

1.36

1.37


He states his argument most clearly in an interview with Bruce Powers:

The imagination is most creative in acoustic space.  Acoustic space has the basic character of a sphere whose focus or "center" is simultaneously everywhere and whose margin is nowhere.  A proper place for the birth of metamorphosis. (Global Village 134)

What undoes McLuhan is not the terms but the argument.  He contrasts Euclidean (script and print) space with acoustic (oral) space.  In McLuhan's principle source on the properties of acoustic space the term itself does not appear.  Indeed, F.M. Cornford in "The Invention of Space" writes "the essential property of Euclidean space is that it had no centre and no circumference (Cornford 219).  The infinite space of Euclidean geometry is very like a paradox of negative theology.

1.37


wake bridge prow





© François Lachance, 1996
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lachance@chass.utoronto.ca