Vision and “the training of perception”: McLuhan’s Medienpädagogik

Abstract

Next to media themselves, pedagogy or education – configured specifically as a “training the senses” (McLuhan & Leonard 1967) or “sensuous education” (McLuhan 1964) – is one of the most prominent themes in McLuhan’s corpus. It is the focus of numerous articles published throughout his career and of two significant albeit relatively obscure monographs that book-end his work on electronic media. As Janine Marchessault (2004) says, McLuhan articulates “a specifically argued pedagogical enterprise” that is central to his “aesthetically-based, highly performative and historically grounded … contribution to the study of media” (xi, 10, 34). In this paper, I focus on this pedagogical enterprise specifically as it develops from McLuhan’s unusual understanding of the senses – including his critique of the dominance of the visual in our culture. By reconstructing McLuhan’s understanding of senses and their relationship to education, I show how McLuhan’s contribution to media is aesthetically, historically and performatively charged, and I make the case for the ongoing currency of his pedagogical enterprise today.