Page 52 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Genealogy of Political Economy 41

creasing appeal to the subconscious mind, and the employment of acts of at-
trition in molding public opinion. 196 For Innis, “the art of making and slant-
ing news” had become a basic skill at which employees of advertisers and
publishers needed to become adept if they hoped to succeed. 197
Finally, and most importantly in Innis’ view, in exercising its freedoms the
press helped promote a space-biased culture and monopoly of knowledge, ne-
glecting time in the sense of continuity and time as duration:

The type of news essential to an increase in circulation, to an increase in adver-
tising, and to an increase in the sale of news was necessarily that which catered
to excitement. A prevailing interest in orgies and excitement was harnessed in
the interests of trade. 198
[Newspaper] bias culminated in an obsession with the immediate. Journalism,
in the words of Henry James, became a criticism of the moment at the mo-
ment. 199
In the United States the dominance of the newspaper led to large-scale devel-
opment of monopolies of communication in terms of space and implied a neg-
lect of problems of time. 200
Time has been cut into pieces the length of a day’s newspaper. 201
For Innis, an undue emphasis on space and lack of concern for time (dura-
tion, continuity) is the tragic flaw of our contemporary civilization. He ex-
claimed, “The balance between time and space has been seriously disturbed
with disastrous consequences to Western civilization.” 202 What, then, are
some of the “disastrous consequences”? Innis proposed the following:

• The “atomization” of society by the “pulverizing” effects of machine in-
dustry; that is, the rise in hedonistic individualism at the expense of com-
munity. 203
• War, as attention in space-bound societies is riveted on capturing and con-
trolling additional space and the accompanying resources. 204
• Lapse of democracy, due both to the decline in oral debate 205 and the “ob-
session of the press with the immediate,” making public opinion “unreli-
able.” 206
• Instability. According to Innis, stability is dependent upon “an appreciation
of a proper balance between the concepts of space and time.” 207
• Lapse of morality. Innis cites Wyndham Lewis: “The modern ‘clerks’ con-
sider everything only as it exists in time, that is as it constitutes a succes-
sion of particular states, a ‘becoming,’ a ‘history,’ and never as it presents a
state of permanence beyond time,” 208 which is to say ideals and enduring
values.
• The waning of the university as an island of free thought. 209