Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis

by Alexander John Watson

With Marginal Man , Alexander John Watson provides the first in-depth intellectual biography of Harold Adams Innis (1894-1952), the great Canadian economic historian and communications guru. Melding biography and analysis, Watson presents, in unprecedented detail, the links between key events in Innis' life and scholarly influences, and the intellectual synthesis that Innis produced. Watson illustrates and reconciles the great thinker's movement from rural Ontario to the centre of Canadian and international scholarship, followed by his relegation to the margin by scholars who did not understand his political project and the essential consistency of his scholarship and vision. Based on exhaustive research including interviews and reviews of archival sources, the book's methodology reflects that of Innis himself, emphasizing oral tradition and 'dirt' research. Innis' thought is remarkably relevant to today's world, and Marginal Man discusses his foresight with regards to technological changes - such as the arrival of the internet - as well as historical changes including the end of the Cold War and the beginnings of today's unipolar world order. This book is an extraordinary work of scholarship in its own right, as well as an essential companion to the work of its subject, one of Canada's most important minds. Works by Harold A. Innis

525 pages, Paperback

First published January 21, 2006

Reviews

[Cioran · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a common but still tragic fact that people who knows how to sell themselves end up being remembered and followed even if that is maybe the only quality they have. Maybe that is what "The Man Without Qualities" mean.

Through archival research and detective work Watson (pun intended) presents the case of how the man who founded all by himself media studies basically is completely overshadowed by one of his students, McLuhan. McLuhan took Innis's complex idea of what media does to humanity and turn it into a simple feel good theory that sells really well and really rides the wave of the age of media empires like Murdoch. Watson backtracks all the way back to the beginning of this idea.

It is the idea of a colonial Canada farmboy who mixes a pragmatic grasp of how economics affect people's lives based on his family's farming with a philosophical grasp of an austere protestantism, and the complete horror from experiencing how media technology leads to precise artillery strikes in the Great War as an artillery spotter relying on electronic communication to how even the rudimentary mass media of his day turned a whole nation into German haters. Publishing his last book on his death bed so prosecution cannot follow him to the hereafter or hunt his family he warned of America never stopping wartime propaganda, just changing the channel to hate Russians instead. He warned of this before red scare was a thing and way before Chomsky would be born and write Manufacturing Consent.

Like the homeless man carrying a sign that says the end is nigh, people forget Innis and his doomsaying. The genealogy of media studies would instead follow McLuhan and lead to today's media studies that oftentimes seems like a celebration of media rather than a critical apparatus checking its power that it is supposed to be.

Watson compiles an account of Innis's thinking from the disorganized notes and the scattered theorizing in his various books, a comprehensive and nuanced theory of how the material circumstances of life affects human life itself in a way Jared Diamond in popular publishing has done or in more serious academic circles transnational history, global history, imperial history has done. Central to Innis's thinking is how media is often a factor that deeply and widely affects human society, but different from McLuhan media is understood in a down to earth brick and mortar way heavily based on Innis's pioneering work in economic history in contrast to McLuhan 's background in literature. Breeding of horses that are strong enough to carry a soldier instead of dragging a chariot in a team changed how war was fought and destroyed empires and created new ones, Innis sees media coming from the same place as seeing this fact about horses.

Studying Innis's life from the perspective of Innis's thinking, Watson charts Innis's attempts at founding media studies, revealing in fine detail how academia works into a damning critique of academia and the university itself. How capitalism invaded the classrooms to how being a professor who timidly just read notes quietly to the students results in students forgetting Innis. To how academic overspecialization result in his interdisciplinary project being coldly received. His books that still form the core texts of media studies today were only published because he used his economic history fame to get them published.

Today Innis is remembered as that name that appears in a media studies course as the founder of the field but it is unclear who reads him anymore today. Media studies today is mostly people who want to turn their love of popular culture into a career. Anime. Games. Star Trek. Nothing wrong with that. But Socrates did not take the hemlock for nothing. Media doesn't exist in a vacuum. The internet is impossible without countless server rooms and endless fiber optic cables. Media is a lot of things but we must not forget that at the most basic level media is a thing. A physical thing.

In terms of Innis's thinking, media is a staple. The staples we bet our whole civilization on determines in a lot of ways and to many levels the nature of civilization. As Innis offered an example of how Rome's reliance on slavery while it made economic sense, also laid the seeds of its own destruction.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Harold Innis is extraordinary and Watson has created a strong monograph on Innis's life and research. Fine scholarship has been presented here and it is a considered academic biography.