The French composer and musique concrète pioneer, invoked here as McLuhan's interlocutor in a Paris dialogue conducted through translators. Bob relays the encounter as comic cross-purposes — Schaeffer "projecting at McLuhan" — but its payoff is McLuhan's self-description as an "esoteric observer." New to it — start with dialogue 27. (Distinct from the Canadian composer Murray Schafer.)
Across the dialogues
Enters as McLuhan's Parisian foil — the cross-purposes dialogue where, projected at by the Frenchman, McLuhan defines himself against mysticism as an "esoteric observer"
Bob reads the McLuhan–Schaeffer dialogue as talking past each other — Schaeffer projecting rather than listening, the translation layer ("Derek" for McLuhan, a woman for the Frenchman) compounding the comedy.
"But Schaeffer doesn't seem too interested in getting what McLuhan saying, and he's projecting at McLuhan."
The encounter's payoff — pressed by Schaeffer, McLuhan draws the line that Cameron then reads back through the event horizon: not a mystic but a "special kind of observer that knows he's coming from the event horizon."
"But then McLuhan said, well, I'm not a mystic. I'm an esoteric observer."
Connections
A Paris dialogue between McLuhan and the French Schaeffer, each speaking through a translator, in which McLuhan calls himself an "esoteric observer."
De Kerckhove ("Derek") translated for McLuhan in the encounter; a woman translated for Schaeffer.