From a sociological point of view, this is a truly challenging time: a time of ‘revelation’ as well as possible ‘revolution’, capable of revealing many of the pathologies of our lifestyle. The Coronavirus crisis has exposed the way oursociety works in a sort of a global social experiment, whichprovides the opportunity to question many of the categories and paradigms of our disciplines, aswell as our way of life...

This essay aims to shed some light on formal cause as a unifying element in McLuhan’s work, namely as the ‘ground’ against which the forefront of his main ideas on media and society do emerge...

RÉSUMÉ La relation entre les médias et la magie a été prévue par Marshall McLuhan il y a plus de quatre décennies. Les médias sont magiques car ils sont des formes de ‘connaissance appliquée’, permettant de réduire la distance entre l’espace et le temps: ou, comme Mauss l’a dit, d’annuler l’intervalle entre le désir et l’accomplissement. Dans un ‘monde désenchanté’, les médias, comme des extensions de sens, permettent aussi une ‘sensibilité accrue’ et, dans la condition contemporaine post-médiatiques – où les frontières entre les médias eux-mêmes, et entre les médias et l’environnement ont tendance à brouiller – ils favorisent un sens de présence et réalité du soi, du monde (comme un antidote à la ‘perte de la présence’ dans l’âge du risque), des relations. SUMMARY The relationship between media and magic has been foreseen by Marshall McLuhan more than four decades ago. Media are magic because they are forms of ‘applied knowledge’, allowing to reduce distance in space and time: or, as Mauss put it, to cancel the interval between desire and fulfillment. In a ‘disenchanted world’, media, as extensions of senses, also allow a ‘enhanced sensitivity’ and, in the contemporary post-media condition – where the boundaries between media themselves, and between media and environment tend to blur – they foster a sense of presence and reality of either the self, the world (as an antidote to the ‘loss of presence’ in the age of risk), the relationships.

One of the best known theoretic contrapositions found today in Sociology, the one between Community and Society (Tönnies), is becoming the subject of a deep reflection, for two main reasons. The first one, in the era of economic and mediatic globalization, is due to the ‘desire for Community’ (Bauman), the Community of belongings, exclusions, identities, and localism. The second one is due to the need to re-create new ethic bonds, shared responsibilities, and democratic participation to solve the ‘common’ problems troubling the World. These are problems from which the ancient system of sovereign states trapped in the grip of imperialistic, ideological or nationalistic hegemonies offers no way out. In this perspective the Community, and first of all the International one, does not represent a nostalgia, but a utopia. It is something not existing, but which has to be built, and that is being built through manifold contributions of theories, analysis, experiences, actions. The ‘fabric’ of the global village, which is today the Hearth, is developing through complicated ‘social wefts’, in which the dramaturgy and narration of the community seem to offer promising processes and results.