Unpublished 1958 paper by Marshall McLuhan, written for Harry Skornia in connection with the proposed NAEB-funded research project . Available in the NAEB archive files online.
Across the dialogues
Surfaces as McLuhan's 1958 breakthrough — media as languages, each with its own grammar — the thought Cameron reads as the exit from the cul-de-sac
The paper marks McLuhan's arrival at his leading thought for the next twenty years — that each medium must be read as a language with its own grammar.
"we need to look at all of the different media… as if each were a language with its own grammar… that's 1958, he's going to live for another 20 years, that becomes his leading thought."Marshall McLuhan, read by Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 8 (31 Dec 2020), 46:20
The paper resolves the question McLuhan had been working since the 1940s — how to rigorously tell rhetoric from dialectic from grammar — by turning those categories onto individual media.
"this will only work if you can find a rigorous way of identifying what is rhetoric, what is dialectic, and what is grammar."Marshall McLuhan, read by Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 8 (31 Dec 2020), 45:09
For Cameron, specifying media as grammars is what unlocks everything — the exit from the cul-de-sac.
"how do we specify what a grammar is… and that sort of unlocks everything and gets us out of the cul-de-sac."Cameron McEwen, The Resonant Interval, Dialogue 8 (31 Dec 2020), 46:45
Connections
Unpublished 1958 paper, written for Harry Skornia.
Written in connection with the proposed NAEB-funded research project; available in the NAEB archive files online.
"That sort of unlocks everything and gets us out of the cul-de-sac" — Cameron reads the grammars-of-media idea as the way out.