Marshall Arts: An Inventory of Common Criticisms of McLuhan’s Media Studies

There has been a resurgence of interest in Marshall McLuhan in the past two decades, and 2011 saw numerous tributes and retrospectives honoring the centenary of his birth. This article considers McLuhan's standing among contemporary scholars by analyzing three of the most common criticisms of his work: technological determinism, technological utopianism, and nonscientific methodology. The author concludes that many commentators have neglected to note that McLuhan deliberately adopted an artistic rather than scientific approach in his probes of media effects, and that his work remains relevant to scholars and students of mass communication.