Hylomorphic McLuhan: One figure, two grounds

Abstract

This article draws on the issue of digital sovereignty as a probe to explore the media scholarship of Marshall McLuhan as it relates to human sovereignty. Taking seriously McLuhan’s characterization of himself as a follower of Thomas Aquinas, the article argues that McLuhan’s application of gestalt psychology to culture and technology is analogical to Aquinas’s existential development of the figure–ground polarity central to Aristotelian hylomorphism. This structural equivalence allows us to understand McLuhan’s notion of ground in two primary senses – as acoustic material potency and as tactile existential actuality. I contend that conflating the existential Ground of human artefacts with the material ground of human artefacts obsolesces the figural structure of human perception, leading to a posthuman metaphysics that is at odds both with McLuhan’s humanistic message and with efforts to promote human sovereignty in the digital world.