The body is an implicit rather than explicit metaphor in McLuhan’s work (Skocz). One
may easily assume, based on his Thomistic view of human perception, that McLuhan
appropriates a Thomistic notion of the human body. Yet, as Thomistic embodiment prioritizes consciousness over the body (Barral), and McLuhan seems to indicate a more robust view of the perceptive body, united by touch, I suggest pushing beyond acceptance of such an assumption.12 As such, one must attempt to uncover McLuhan’s notion of the body through his related
metaphors of extension, and incarnate (Skocz; Van den Eede 139-151).
Drawing on the work of medical researchers “Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas” in UM, McLuhan characterizes a body whose technological extension instantiates “sensory stress” (63- 70). Sensory stress then causes us to “autoamputate,” or numb, our extended sense or organs, permitting us to avoid bodily “dis-ease” via maintenance of equilibrium or comfort (63-70). As McLuhan assumes that “every technology or medium is an extension of a human sense, body part, or capability” (Van den Eede 43-44), and that “human organisms and environments are … intermixed,” (Van den Eede 149) the metaphors of extension, sensory stress and autoamputation
indicate, “qualitative alteration,” “of the concerned sense [or] body part” (Van den Eede 43-44). This alteration ultimately rests upon McLuhan’s reflexive hybrid ontology of mediated being.
Van den Eede says that extension as alteration suggests reflexivity because McLuhan views mediation as “two-way traffic between our bodies and our technologies or environments” (150). This is what I term McLuhan’s double media thesis – the idea that media are both
extensions of our bodies and environments in which are bodies are situated. The reflexivity, per Van den Eede, “holds huge implications for philosophical notions of ‘embodiment’”(150) and he draws upon Skocz to offer discussion of “McLuhan’s extension theory as parallel to Merleau- Ponty’s concept of embodiment” (150). Per Skocz, McLuhan seems to assert a view of bodily extension as “unidirectional” (14-16). However, Skocz says that McLuhan’s related metaphor of
sensory stress actually reveals the implicit assumption of a sort of backchanneling or corporeal
incorporation of media, similar to Merleau-Ponty’s metaphor of extension-incorporation of tools (14-16). In Van den Eede’s read, McLuhan, “stresses the centrality of embodiment, just like Merleau-Ponty does” (150). I agree with Skocz and Van den Eede, with qualification.
As Skocz and Van den Eede neglect the influence of McLuhan’s Catholicism (Marchand; Marchessault; Wachs), I suggest, parallel to Richard Kearney’s characterization of Merleau- Ponty’s Eucharistic embodiment, that McLuhan’s Catholicism is perhaps additively revealing of his notion of the body. In an early lecture, Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters, McLuhan says, “human perception is literally incarnation” (169). This quote coupled with McLuhan’s notion that “speech is analogue with perception” (M&L 169) indicates that we embody the world through the reflexive interplay between figure and ground that is both visible and invisible – similar to Merleau-Ponty’s view of the lived body.
Ultimately, McLuhan’s body, extended and otherwise, is a biological entity and a perceptive grounding via the sensus communis of tactility. Our bodies are unitary (i.e., subject- object), yet not synthetic, constitutive vehicles that sense, think, speak and act. Our incarnate, perceptive bodies are exemplary of the poetic process of communication that mediates worldly relations (M&L 169; Wachs). As “true perception” for McLuhan, is “the ability to hold both figure and ground in one’s attention, in a dynamic and resonating relationship” (Marchand 260), I turn to consider additional metaphors that deepen understanding of how our bodies perceive. 3.3.4 Figure and Ground, Blindness, Visible and Invisible, and Resonant Interval
McLuhan’s metaphorical mosaic of figure and ground, blindness, visible and invisible and resonant interval, taken as a whole, reveals additional assumptions informing McLuhan’s Media Ecology as well as his criticism of phenomenology. Van den Eede connects McLuhan’s
figure and ground metaphor with Eric and Marshall’s LOM and its discussion of formal cause.
Although Merleau-Ponty rejected linear views of Aristotelian causality, McLuhan maintains, in contrast to modernist, linear conceptions, a circular interpretation of Aristotle’s causes
(McLuhan MFC) – a conception Merleau-Ponty would accept (Carman 35).
In LOM, the McLuhans describe formal cause in terms of the traditional philosophical dichotomy of being versus becoming. The McLuhans, as with the figure and ground metaphor, view this relationship as being and becoming. Van den Eede explains, “Formal cause ‘contains’ the ‘result’ of being, i.e., becoming as well as being ‘itself’” (189). That is, “formal cause” as
ground in LOM suggests an “expectational horizon, as grasping of cause and effect of thing and
word in one” through creative emergence of form via figure-ground interplay (Van den Eede 198). Van den Eede explains that the McLuhans’ notion of form is three-dimensional and includes “an unattainable ‘core’ as ‘ground,’ the ‘interplay’ between the two as ‘interval,’ and
the ‘effects’ as …‘figure’” (190). Thus, McLuhan’s view of form involves blindness of its
always-elusive core, the interplay of figure-ground, and the interval or space of the “and”, where figure emerges, thereby allowing us to perceive aspects of ground (i.e., formal cause).
The McLuhans describe this interval as “resonant” and dynamic in LOM (70-77; 102). The between, the interval, of figure-ground is relational mediation, which the McLuhans
characterize as “play” (77). Engaging the example of the touch and play between wheel and axel, the McLuhans say, “Without ‘play,’ without … interval” between figure and ground, “there is neither wheel nor axle. The space between the wheel and axle … defines both” (77). Van den Eede says that this is a salient metaphor for McLuhan, one that makes his hybrid ontology of
mediation unique. For, as the McLuhans contend, even phenomenology has not grasped the
significance of the interval, “there is in Heidegger still no sense of interplay between figure and ground; the attention has just been shifted from one to the other” (LOM 63). The McLuhans’ point here is crucial. Without resonance, the interplay of interval, we cannot grasp aspects of lived experience – figure, ground, or their conjunctions and distinctions. We are blind.
Per Van den Eede, McLuhan’s hybrid substantivist-relational ontology of mediation attributes the experience of blindness to “our perceptual, existential, or cultural setup” (85). Though speaking specifically of our technological blindness, Van den Eede’s discussion implies consideration of a more general existential blindness resulting from our corporeal situatedness, amidst time and experiential space (see LOM Ch. 1; LOM 83). Though all human experience seems to involve blindness to certain elements of the visible-invisible, figure-ground interplay and interval of human experience, in LOM the McLuhans indicate that technological blindness, that is, experience in a technological milieu, always “results in a transformation of sensibilities” due to our bodies’ seeking equilibrium (83). Technological blindness implies that the resonant
interval becomes arrested (LOM 82-85). Per McLuhan’s M.E., though we aim for equilibrium through extension-autoamputation, rapid technological innovation, from the printing press through mechanical and electronic development, leaves us imbalanced, biased, blind and numb – anesthetized, dis-eased and anxious, like Narcissus.