Abstract

In McLuhan and Baudrillard , Gary Genosko traces McLuhan's influence on the influential French postmodernist thinker, Jean Baudrillard. Gary Genosko argues that McLuhan's ideas have been far more influential than hitherto imagined in the development of postmodern theory. Tracing parallels between the so-called "McLuhan Cult" of the 1960's and the "Baudrillard Scene" of the 1980's, he explores how McLuhan's ideas persist and are distorted through Baudrillard's work, via concepts such as semiurgy, participation, reversibility, the primitive/tribal, and implosion. He argues that it is through the filter of Baudrillard's writings that McLuhan has had the greatest impact on contemporary cultural thought and practice.