The Technology is not the Cultural Form?: Raymond Williams's Sociological Critique of Marshall McLuhan

This article's prime aim is to provide an exegesis of Raymond Williams's neglected "mature'' theorization of means of communication. Much of this aspect of his cultural materialism is articulated as a critique of Marshall McLuhan. Williams attempts to recover and develop what he saw as the lost early promise of McLuhan's work. The article thus takes the form of an account of the complex relationship between the two authors' projects from their common origins in English literary criticism through to Williams's rejection of McLuhan's proto-postmodern avant-gardism. The normative sociological typologization of means of communication offered by Williams is argued to be directly relevant to contemporary research.