Abstract

Exploring the philosophical influence exercised by the works of Wyndham Lewis over Marshall McLuhan, this article contends that these two figures both sought to capture a momentary stillness through the figure of the vortex, first established in Lewis’s early contributions to the Vorticist art movement, a stillness that necessarily endures within the tumult of a world of electric media. What Lewis hoped to achieve through painting, McLuhan sought likewise in the study of media, foregrounding the need to identify what remains fixed within the seemingly ever-accelerating tempo of modern life, viewing this task as crucial for resisting the determinative powers of media technologies.