Bulgarian-born author of Crowds and Power, quoted by McLuhan at the close of his 1974 essay "Media and the Inflation Crowd". In Dialogue 11 Cameron uses Canetti's account of inflation, depreciation, and humiliation to explain the crowd's destruction of the individual — and McLuhan's reading of both the 1930s scapegoating of the Jews and the Watergate affair.
Across the dialogues
Supplies the mechanism for the inflation crowd — depreciation, humiliation, and the scapegoat
For Canetti, a sudden self-depreciation is never forgotten — the crowd as such is that depreciation of individuality.
"no one ever forgets a sudden depreciation of themselves, for it is too painful. Unless he thrust it onto someone else, he carries it with him for the rest of his life. And the crowd as such never forgets its depreciation."
The depreciated crowd seeks something still more worthless to despise — a dynamic process of humiliation continued until its object is reduced to utter worthlessness.
"The natural tendency afterwards is to find something which is worth even less than itself, which one can despise as one was despised."
Cameron reads humiliation etymologically — humus, earth — so the sky-thrown self seeks humiliation as a way back down to the ground.
"humiliate comes from humus, earth."
Connections
McLuhan closes the 1973 essay on the crowd's depreciation with Canetti's account of inflation and humiliation.
McLuhan reads the post-war crowd through Canetti — depreciation, humiliation, and the drive to massive retaliation.