McLuhan's distinction between two "schools or approaches to the creative act," lifted by Bob in Dialogue 29 from McLuhan's 1953 essay on Joyce (collected in The Interior Landscape, 1969) and made the governing frame of his Trump book. The cathartic (or ethical, or moral) school treats art as "moral discipline" and writes "a forged check on our hopes and sympathies"; the cognitive school reads the world's "radiant signatures." Bob's argument is that the moral, cathartic approach — the reflex of journalism and the humanities — literally cannot perceive Trump, while the cognitive view can. New to it — this is the spine of the whole dialogue.
Across the dialogues
Enters with the book's first real reading — McLuhan's early-1950s cathartic/ethical vs cognitive pair surfaced as the frame for "Trump the cognitive artist," the man ethics cannot be applied to
The concept's first surfacing, a full book-reading before this one — Bob introduces McLuhan's early-1950s pair as buried knowledge "no one even knows about," the frame he will spend the book applying to Trump.
"No one even knows about these two schools of art."
Returned to at the source and read line by line — the pair traced back into the 1953 Joyce essay and hardened into a diagnostic, morality reading Trump as a forged check while only perception reads him at all
The frame is McLuhan's own — a pair of approaches to the creative act, set out in the 1953 Joyce essay, that Bob turns into the lens for reading Trump.
"there are two schools or approaches to the creative act as spelled out by Marshall McLuhan."
The cathartic pole named at its sharpest — where the cognitive artist "reads radiant signatures," the cathartic one forges a check drawn on the audience's hopes and sympathies, art as moral appeal rather than perception.
"but the signer of a forged check on our hopes and sympathies."
The pair mapped straight onto the present — the "forged check on our hopes and sympathies" is the Trump television performance, so the cathartic diagnosis and the pro-wrestling reading converge.
"It's like Trump's TV show."
Bob's strong version of the distinction — cathartic art fails not on morality but on perception; in the electric century the moral view of art is imperceptive, "not helping what art is supposed to do."
"It's actually wrong to do cathartic art in the 20th century."
Cameron's refusal to moralize the split — nobody knows what art is "supposed" to do, so the forged check is "kind of inevitable"; the sole alternative is the cognitive stance, reading the world's radiant signatures, "which is how we saw Joyce."
"the only way not to have a forged check in our hopes and sympathies is to be a reader of radiant signatures"
Sharpened into amateur-versus-professional — little-a art as anti-environment against capital-A "conspiracy of art," with McLuhan the amateur who could still make an anti-environment
Bob frames McLuhan's move as amateur against professional — little-a art as working anti-environment against capital-A "art art," which Baudrillard calls "the conspiracy of art."
"posing the amateur against the professional."
Connections
The pair comes from McLuhan's 1953 Joyce essay, collected in The Interior Landscape (1969).
Arnold's 1853 "Preface to Poems" is McLuhan's case in point for the cathartic school's hostility to discontinuity.
Bob's whole reading turns on it — the ethical/cathartic approach cannot perceive Trump; only the cognitive view can.