Sentence:  It would be, were it not for the powers attributed to <WSD>mediology</WSD>, which Debray defines as a battle against a marked Western tendency, 'la coupure de l'esthétique' [the split between aesthetics and technology] (ibid.: 163). 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  An interdisciplinary approach to the study of culture, created by Régis Debray in 1979, that pays specific attention to human symbolic activity and to technology, especially as a medium of cultural transmission.