Crises Then as Now:
McLuhan with Urbanist Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and
Artist Gyorgy Kepes
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Jaqueline McLeod Rogers (Ph.D) is a Canadian writer, editor, and researcher and professor of rhetoric, writing and communications at the University of Winnipeg. She has been on the board of the Canadian Communication Association, the Media Ecology Association, and the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Communication.
McLeod Rogers is author of 3 books, co-author of 2, and co-editor of 3. Many of her publications address writing strategies and ethics, and she is a recognized as a leading scholar in studies of Marshall McLuhan. |
McLuhan Research
New Book: Crises Then as Now: McLuhan, with Urbanist Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and Artist Gyorgy Kepes
(Peter Lang: February 20, 2025)
(Peter Lang: February 20, 2025)
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This book explores how Marshall McLuhan, with urbanist Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and artist György Kepes, responded to crises in the 60s and 70s similar to what we now face: human-to-human violence on a planetary scale, carving inequities and fomented by arms and mediation; catastrophic human to non-human relations, with human activity sparking irreversible (and accelerating) environmental degradation; imbalanced human-to-machine relations, with computational decision-making outstripping human intervention.
McLuhan, Tyrwhitt, and Kepes called for redesign to stimulate sensory engagement and participation. Merging art and science knowledge was requisite to creating counter environments and livable futures and allowing humans to work with (rather than under or over) machines. Placed in dialogue, the three figures map out paths of hope as well as danger zones – geographies that speak to our present as we grapple with the role of technology in infrastructure and environment, art and culture. Advance Praise for Crises Then as Now “In this eminently timely book, McLeod Rogers and company recuperate the insights of McLuhan, Tyrwhitt and Kepes into the environmental and social crises of their day (which have only been exacerbated by the passage of time), and draw out the lessons of the trio’s highly productive intellectual collaboration for designing an alternative, more balanced future imbued with hope, rather than anxiety and despair. This book is essential reading for scholars interested in urban planning, re-understanding media, and the fusion of art and science.” --David Howes, author of The Sensory Studies Manifesto: Tracking the Sensorial Revolution in the Arts and Human Sciences “This is a timely and necessary book. It considers the ways in which three crucial mid-20th century thinkers understood the epochal challenges of their time, and thought of ways to both articulate these challenges and think strategies to face them. As McLeod Rogers phrases it in her Introduction: “Identifying McLuhan, Kepes, and Tyrwhitt as early allies in recognizing the intersectional damage arising from ‘human activity’ gone rogue advances a conception of shared generational logics.” It is further evidence of the continued relevance of these three figures who’ve passed in and out of style, but whose “interthinking” approach (as Kepes put it), opened broad avenues for crisis- and future-focused thought involving deep knowledge of technology, art, science and the “natural” environment. They did not have the concept of the “anthropocene” at their disposal, but they thought along its terms. Why is this history important? I will quote McLeod Rogers again: “While establishing a line of positive kinship between then and now does not improve material conditions—does not decrease strife, deterioration, and threat–it does provide a more nuanced and contextualized understanding of intellectual lineage and avoid generational blaming.” I can think of no better scholars than McLeod Rogers, Ellen Shoskes and Charissa Terranova to have tackled this complex subject matter. Highly recommended!” --Oliver A. I. Botar, Associate Director, Graduate Studies and Research, University of Manitoba “Crises Then as Now expands our understanding of Marshall McLuhan by contextualizing his thinking in relation to two influential contemporaries and colleagues, Tyrwhitt and Kepes. Without sacrificing the distinctiveness of each protagonist, the reader is provided a venn diagram of the confluence of interest in the impact of technological developments on environments, ecologies, and humanity. This work draws a tread between theorist, planner, artist and, between then and now, to not merely identify the roots of the current planetary crisis, but to point to potential solutions.” --Susan Drucker, Lawrence Stessin Distinguished Professor of Journalism, Lawrence Herbert School of Communication, Hofstra University. “Crises Then as Now discusses ideas and research practices of three major intellectuals of the previous century – McLuhan, Tyrwhitt, Kepes – through a diffractive and effective approach that highlights, in an original way, the interactive ontological and theoretical connections between their diverse modus operandi . In their works, “crisis” is a common thread, as these thinkers explored the consequences of human activity potentially going rogue at a time when “the bomb” was in the air and media were becoming the new nature; theirs was a fast changing, critical scenario that resonates now. Fortunately, this is a book that does not fuel fear but critical thinking, civic awareness and, therefore, hope. By rereading McLuhan through Tyrwhitt and Kepes, this book teaches us shared strategies for responding, even today, to stormy change. It is a fascinating book that encourages us to think creatively and together to face the new challenges posed by our complex realities.” --Elena Lamberti, author of Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic. Probing the Origins of Media Studies (U of T Press, 2012) “A rare experience to find a book now that with great agility and eloquence engages McLuhan through art, city and urban planning and design, literature, media contemplations and scholarly musing. Why rare? Because McLuhan disdained specialization and strived to perceive communication processes in a whole vision. Jaqueline McLeod Rogers achieves this kind of imperative vision in a beautifully written, collaborative work that emphasizes an original fractal approach to art, science, civics and poetics. What is its imperative? In a time of deepest media crises of information and anti-information, of traumatic emergences at crossroads, of technological cruxes, of crucial moments in our ways of perceiving, this book addresses the riddles we face while seeking hopeful patterns. The emergences and traumas speak of possible extinction. Jaqueline McLeod Rogers, co-creating with Ellen Shoshkes and Charissa N. Terranova, provides us with educating ideas and perceptions that bravely encounter where we are, and how McLuhan, Tyrwhitt and Kepes can become guides. This work goes past antithetical critique toward creative and recreative possibility.” --B.W. Powe, author of Mysteria, Ladders Made of Water, The Charge in the Global Membrane, Where Seas and Fables Meet, Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, Apocalypse and Alchemy; Associate Professor, York University’s Departments of English and Humanities |
McLuhan's Techno-Sensorium City (2020)(Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)Marshall McLuhan was both an activist and a speculative urbanist who drew from cross-disciplinary and ahistorical sources to explore constitutive exchanges between humanity and technologies to alter human perception and imagine a sustainable future based on collective participation in a responsive urban environment. This environment—a techno-sensorium—would endeavour to design and program technology to be favourable to life and capable of engaging with multiple senses.
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Why we must embrace geoengineering and other technologies to stop the climate crisis
"Recent adverse climate events — such as summer wildfires — have given Canadians something to worry about. Despite reports that most countries are not on track to meet their 2030 emissions targets to keep the Earth’s warming to within 1.5 C to 2 C, many continue to pin their hopes on fulfilling the goals of the Paris Agreement."
(The Conversation, National Post, 2021)
(The Conversation, National Post, 2021)
Susanne Langer, Marshall McLuhan and media ecology: Feminist principles in humanist projects
Abstract
In current scholarship, Susanne Langer and her theories of art, perception and connectivity are less well known than McLuhan’s. Comparison brings to the fore that both were concerned with the dulling effects of heavy-handed science and technology unregulated by human hand and heart, and both understood the expressive and liberatory possibilities of language as media and metaphor. By reading ‘diffractively’ ‐ finding new connections and honouring patterns over polemics ‐ this article brings Langer back into the scholarly conversation and reinvigorates our understanding of McLuhan. Langer did not consider her thought as principled by feminism. Yet according to recent critical biographer Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, her work was rooted in feminist ontology for espousing principles of relationality and embodiment. My article argues that McLuhan, too, eschewed dichotomies and linearities of traditional thought for the principle of relationality. Extending this claim further, my article also submits that media ecology ‐ with its emphasis on interconnectivities, on feeling and thinking, on non-linearity ‐ has features in common with feminist thinking.
(Explorations in Media Ecology, 2021)
In current scholarship, Susanne Langer and her theories of art, perception and connectivity are less well known than McLuhan’s. Comparison brings to the fore that both were concerned with the dulling effects of heavy-handed science and technology unregulated by human hand and heart, and both understood the expressive and liberatory possibilities of language as media and metaphor. By reading ‘diffractively’ ‐ finding new connections and honouring patterns over polemics ‐ this article brings Langer back into the scholarly conversation and reinvigorates our understanding of McLuhan. Langer did not consider her thought as principled by feminism. Yet according to recent critical biographer Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, her work was rooted in feminist ontology for espousing principles of relationality and embodiment. My article argues that McLuhan, too, eschewed dichotomies and linearities of traditional thought for the principle of relationality. Extending this claim further, my article also submits that media ecology ‐ with its emphasis on interconnectivities, on feeling and thinking, on non-linearity ‐ has features in common with feminist thinking.
(Explorations in Media Ecology, 2021)
Imaginations: Marshall McLuhan and the Arts(Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, 2017)
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OTHER RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS:
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Contested Sovereignties: States, Media Platforms, Peoples, and the Regulation of Media Content and Big Data in the Networked Society
Abstract
This article examines the legal and normative foundations of media content regulation in the borderless networked society. We explore the extent to which internet undertakings should be subject to state regulation, in light of Canada’s ongoing debates and legislative reform. We bring a cross-disciplinary perspective (from the subject fields of law; communications studies, in particular McLuhan’s now classic probes; international relations; and technology studies) to enable both policy and language analysis. We apply the concept of sovereignty to states (national cultural and digital sovereignty), media platforms (transnational sovereignty), and citizens (autonomy and personal data sovereignty) to examine the competing dynamics and interests that need to be considered and mediated. While there is growing awareness of the tensions between state and transnational media platform powers, the relationship between media content regulation and the collection of viewers’ personal data is relatively less explored. We analyse how future media content regulation needs to fully account for personal data extraction practices by transnational platforms and other media content undertakings. We posit national cultural sovereignty—a constant unfinished process and framework connecting the local to the global—as the enduring force and justification of media content regulation in Canada. The exercise of state sovereignty may be applied not so much to secure strict territorial borders and centralized power over citizens but to act as a mediating power to promote and protect citizens’ individual and collective interests, locally and globally.
(Laws, 2021)
This article examines the legal and normative foundations of media content regulation in the borderless networked society. We explore the extent to which internet undertakings should be subject to state regulation, in light of Canada’s ongoing debates and legislative reform. We bring a cross-disciplinary perspective (from the subject fields of law; communications studies, in particular McLuhan’s now classic probes; international relations; and technology studies) to enable both policy and language analysis. We apply the concept of sovereignty to states (national cultural and digital sovereignty), media platforms (transnational sovereignty), and citizens (autonomy and personal data sovereignty) to examine the competing dynamics and interests that need to be considered and mediated. While there is growing awareness of the tensions between state and transnational media platform powers, the relationship between media content regulation and the collection of viewers’ personal data is relatively less explored. We analyse how future media content regulation needs to fully account for personal data extraction practices by transnational platforms and other media content undertakings. We posit national cultural sovereignty—a constant unfinished process and framework connecting the local to the global—as the enduring force and justification of media content regulation in Canada. The exercise of state sovereignty may be applied not so much to secure strict territorial borders and centralized power over citizens but to act as a mediating power to promote and protect citizens’ individual and collective interests, locally and globally.
(Laws, 2021)
Oscars 2022: ‘Best director’ for Jane Campion’s slow-burn approach in
‘The Power of the Dog’
Published: March 17, 2022 4.52pm EDT Updated: March 28, 2022
Mothering/Internet/Kids [M/I/K]
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Blog: Talking Care Family BloglinesJaqueline McLeod Rogers, Fiona Green, and other guest contributors explore ethics and privacy matters influencing family life and practices. Explores how the internet/social media enables and disables dreams, daily practices, and relationships. Who’s watching? Who’s talking? How much time are we spending/wasting?
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