Incarnation and Digitization: Marshall McLuhan and the Digital Humanities

One of the defining features of the developing field of the Digital Humanities (DH) is its interdisciplinary character. This paper will attempt to indicate how theological insights can contribute at a more theoretical level to DH. Specifically, it will attempt to suggest a way that Marshall McLuhan can contribute positively to defining and developing DH. I suspect that McLuhan’s notions about technology as an extension of human senses and about the plasticity of human consciousness – and the theological impulse behind them – have a lot to contribute to the discussion surrounding the value of DH. Marshall McLuhan, as a Catholic humanist who anticipated many essential features of digital culture, is a figure uniquely positioned to reveal how theology can apply to this emerging field. I will argue specifically that McLuhan’s incarnational principle, critiqued and developed by contemporary digital humanists, can reveal DH to be a fully embodied endeavor that resonates with the malleability of human cognition.