Page 67 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

56 Chapter One

be continually alert to the implications of this bias and perhaps hope that considera-
tion of the implications of other media to various civilizations may enable us to see
more clearly the bias of our own.” Innis, “The Bias of Communication,” in The Bias
of Communication (1951; reprint, with an Introduction by Marshall McLuhan,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 33–34.
157. In his essay, “The Role of the Social Scientist,” Innis quipped that “the task
of attempting to become a social scientist may be regarded as beyond human en-
durance. He may take comfort in the argument that thought in the social sciences
grows by the development and correction of bias. On the other hand, he will receive
small thanks and possibly much contempt and persecution for attempting to tear the
mask from innumerable biases which surround him. . . . The first duty of the social
scientist is to avoid martyrdom. As a tribute to that duty the writer hereby brings to
an end a list of biases which can be illustrated, or extended, or interpreted to illustrate
the bias of the writer to the reader’s content.” See Harold A. Innis, “The Role of the
Social Scientist” (1935; in Staples, Markets and Cultural Change: Selected Essays,
Harold A. Innis, ed. Daniel Drache, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Univer-
sity Press, 1995), 432.
158. As noted by Pencak, Innis admired Veblen’s conscious struggle against his
own biases. William Pencak, “Harold Innis, Thorstein Veblen, and In-formation,” in
Semiotics and Information Science, ed. Paul Perron, Marcel Danesi, Jean Umiker-
Sebeok, and Anthony Watanabe (Toronto: LEGAS, 2000), 159.
159. Innis, The Bias of Communication, xvii.
160. Innis, “The Role of the Social Scientist,” 430. In fact, Innis’entire staples the-
sis was in reaction to his dissatisfaction with his PhD thesis on the Canadian Pacific
Railway. See Neill, A New Theory of Value, 35–36, for citations from Innis’ “Autobi-
ography.”
161. Neill, A New Theory of Value, 100.
162. Watson, Marginal Man, 313ff.
163. Innis declared: “Learning tends to follow force to move to centres in which
force [is] able to protect it”—as when, we might note, Jewish intellectuals like
Adorno and Horkheimer fled Nazi Germany for the USA. Harold A. Innis, The Idea
File of Harold Innis, ed. William Christian (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1980), 60.
164. Harold A. Innis, Changing Concepts of Time (1952; reprint, with Introduction
by James W. Carey, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, Publishers, Inc., 2004),
xxvi.
165. Harold A. Innis, “Minerva’s Owl” (1947; reprint, The Bias of Communica-
tion, Introduction by Marshall McLuhan, Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1971), 30–31.
166. Innis wrote, “In the fourth century Plato attempted to save the remnants of
Greek culture in the style of the Socratic dialogues which in the words of Aristotle
stood half way between prose and poetry. In the seventh epistle he wrote, ‘no intelli-
gent man will ever be so bold as to put into language those things which his reason
has contemplated, especially not into a form that is unalterable—which must be the