I am reading Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Me for a graduate course. In this collection of essays, lectures, and interviews, I am struck most by his analysis of the Negro [appropriate word for the time period in which he was writing] situation in the 1960’s, as well as the Native Americans, and Moslems, all of whom he identified as “tribal” and being negatively effected by the “electricity” that is now at the group’s disposal.
On page 145 (taken from a lecture at Fordham University in 1967), McLuhan states:
“Any technology creates a new environment. It creates a total numbness in our senses because our instincts are to hide from that which is not known, that which is strange, so people are always unaware of new environments. . . . For example, at the present moment the changes going on in the Negro world are very much tied up to electricity. Nobody knows this. That is, you put a total electric environment of information around a population, and the people who feel it most immediately are those who are closes to the ear world, the total world. The Negro lives a more integral lide, a more unified life than the rest of the population. . . . The Negro is turned on by electricity. The old literacy never turned him on because it rejected him and degraded him. The old mechanical worl rejected and degraded the Negro, but electricity turns him on and accepts him totally as an integral human being. Electricity is organic; it is not mechanical. So the Negro feels that he owns the world under these conditions, as in a certain sense he does. . . . But as soon as the Negro is turned on, he looks to the old technology that rejected him with anger. The destruction that follows is symbolic. It’s not to be measured by some kind of rationalistic method at all. It’s the enemy. . . . We’re creating these electric environments without knowing what they do to people at all, . . .”
What is McLuhan trying to say? The “we” is those in charge, mainstream society, whoever that happens to be. Obviously, white. In his attempt to explain the 1967 riots, McLuhan is saying that “electricity” has been brought to the Negro. In the book as I understand it, “electricity” is radio, television, movies, electricty itself. Prior to the 1960’s, the Negro had no electricity? That is the conclusion that I am drawing. And it is a simplistic, narrow-minded conclusion. Where were these Negroes supposed to be living so that they had no access to electricity? What happened in 1967 that caused the Negro to turn to violence in the form of the riots?
McLuhan does address this last question. In his lecture in 1967 entitled “Open Mind Surgery”, he says,
“When the Negro experiences our new electronic environment, he is turned on as never before. Black power just surges up as he feels this involvement and congenial hospitality of the electronic environment, and he looks around and he sees the old literate, mechanical environment, which had always rejected him, degraded him, alienated him, and this naturally enrages him. He destroys, if possible the enemy.” (151)
Now the Negro is not literate and was not any part of society. This was 1967.
Then in 1977 in a television interview which is referred to as “Violence as a Quest for Identity”, McLuhan says,”All forms of violence are quests for identity.” (266) The interviewer asked McLuhan, “Do you feel that the fact that you and I have enjoyed the rewards of literacy, that we are more protected against television than a child?” McLuhan replied, “Yes, I think you get a certain immunity just as you get a certain immunity from booze by literacy. The literate man can carry his liquor, the tribal man cannot. That’s why in the Moslem world or in the Native world booze is impossible. It’s the demon rum. However, literacy also, though, makes us very accessible to ideas and propaganda. The literate man is the natural sucker for propaganda. You cannot propagandize a native. You can sell him rum and trinkets, but you cannot sell him ideas.” (270)
So, Negroes had no identity and thus were violent; Moslems and Native Americans were tribal people who could not hold their liquor because they didn’t have the protection of literacy and liquor was a demon to them; and the only thing about Whites was that they were susceptible to propaganda.
McLuhan may have seen some of the good uses and changes that technology could bring and he may have ruminated on the role of artists, poets and painters in particular, as seers for society, but for me, the blatant biases and prejudices get in the way of the other ideas. They make me question the validity of his ideas and wonder what were his motives.
Thanks for pointing to these sections, as they are certainly ones that we will have to discuss in class (though I didn’t assign “Open Mind Surgery” so most of us won’t have read it). As you mention, much of his terminology may be been appropriate for the time period but the implications of such rhetoric is concerning—doubly so because he offers little support for his assertions.
However, with McLuhan, we must also consider what he is trying to say with such terms (like Negro and Oriental), whether they are merely a synecdoche of sorts for larger issues on the inequality of information access across all segments of society. Indeed, this is less about literacy, per se (more than 95% of the population was literate in the 1960s according to NAAL, and McLuhan would have known that: http://web.archive.org/web/20020416034427/http://nces.ed.gov/naal/historicaldata/illiteracy.asp), than about information access, information distribution, via electronic media, and the impact that electronic media have for distributing information across society and for creating a new kind of electronic literacy—what we might call now technological literacy (see http://wolff-tfw-fall07.pbwiki.com/f/selfe-literacy-1999.pdf for Cindy Selfe’s discussion of the cultural implications of technological literacy). Books (the “old literacy” according to McLuhan) brought ideas to, and created a public sphere, which resulted in power and identity formation for certain segments of the society; television and radio brought information to all segments of society regardless of who and/or where they were.
If we try to connect the dots in terms of McLuhan’s ideas, information access leads to identity formation and identity formation is accompanied by violence—whether it is physical violence or another kind he does not discuss in enough detail. I’m not saying that I agree with this 100% but that this is what McLuhan seems to be trying to say in the passages you present above.
Also, and this is no excuse, of course, McLuhan is speaking about things that few had ever discussed, or even thought about in the academic sphere. Later work by such important scholars and writers as Lila Abu-Lughod describe the negative cultural impact of technologies like TV isolated communities (such as, Bedouin communities in Egypt), and much has also been written on Native American communities. The movie The Gods Must be Crazy is also an important text in this area.
So, lots to talk about—thanks for starting this discussion!
By: BW on February 14, 2008
at 10:22 am
It is hard to take what McLuhan says into account when reading from modern day standards. The words and phrases he used back in the 60’s were perhaps reflective of the political and social climate of the time – although that is no excuse for today’s standards, where cultural sensetivity is paramount in most mediums.
However, I do not believe that McLuhan was attmepting to be purposefully derogative towards minoroties, but reading it with eyes from the 21st century it can certainly seem that way. I think you have to take what he says and try and generalize it to encompass all society, not just pinpoint smaller sections. The issues of today seem concerned with more generational gaps than cultural gaps, at least, that is the way I interpretated what McLuhan was saying.
By: blandable on February 14, 2008
at 5:24 pm
Your blog post and our class discussion made me reread that McLuhan section again after our class. I appreciate your insight. Upon second read, it does sound quite awful on the surface, but I still read the entire thing as a metaphor.
To me, “we” means society, “turned on” means empowered, and “liquor” stands for the seduction of the print medium, lulling the establishment into thinking it is truly informed. I take the “enemy” to mean poverty and ignorance. That is what was truly destroyed through these new communication modes and the societal change they brought.
By: boomerspeak on February 16, 2008
at 6:28 pm
Karen–
I would caution you against making hasty judgments about McLuhan — positive or negative — on the basis of one collection of previously unpublished works. I’ve been reading McLuhan for forty years and have only come to realize, in the last two decades, that his perspective (if that is an accurate word to describe whence McLuhan comes) is shifting and frequently temporary. Read ALL of his works to have the best sense of who he was as a media theorist and social/cultural critic.
As far as his treatment of “negroes” in the passages you cited, it is important to point out that these ideas were influenced strongy by others, most notably Millman Parry, Jack Goody, Ian Watt, and Walter Ong. “Tribalism” per se, is not a racial categorization, but a cultural one. McLuhan predicted (if you read him the way I do) that eventually all of western culture would become tribalized. The first world would become the third world, and the playing field would become somewhat more leveled. I don’t know about you, but I see that happening now.
Orality and tribalism are not racial conditions (as I said) but cultural ones. They are linked to non-literacy (NOT to illiteracy). His point was that one cannot expect nonliterate folk to respond to electric culture in exactly the same ways that literate people do. And if you read him more deeply, you’ll find that he believed that tribal, oral, nonliterates ultimately had an advantage over literate folk when it comes to assimilating the tribalizing effects of electricity.
If McLuhan was a racist (and what white person wasn’t in 1965?), it would be in the same way that most Americans and Canadians were in the 60s. His “probes” were not racist, however. They were culturally prescient.
By: Dr. Fallon on April 24, 2008
at 11:25 pm