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Vilém Flusser, escritor-pensador. Modos de la escritura en El universo de las

imagines técnicas
Esteban Prado

Keywords: Flusser / rhetorical strategies / etymology / definition / fiction / artist

This article is part of a larger investigation about three “writer-thinkers”: Giorgio Agamben (Rome,
1942), Héctor Libertella (Bahía Blanca, 1945 – Buenos Aires, 2006), and Vilém Flusser (Praga, 1920 -
1991). As a “writer-thinker” Vilém Flusser proposes that these notions are reversible, in the same way
that he stated that “active” and “passive” were no longer differentiable. His essays are based upon a
strong reflection on language, which is made through the process of writing. In many ways, he uses
writing to think, and thinking to write. This paper further explores his use of etymology, definitions,
series, as well as the nature of writing and fiction, in order to write and think.

➔ Escritor-pensador (PDF 246.31 KB)

A metamorfose de Kafka em Flusser

Gustavo Bernardo Krause

Keywords: Franz Kafka / philosophy / literature / fiction / philosophical fiction

The most famous literary metamorphosis is Kafka’s short eponymous tale published in 1915. For more
than a hundred years now, the first sentence of The Metamorphosis has been provoking an infinite series
of metamorphoses: in culture, literature, as well as in readers and writers. Among the writers most
affected by the event, we find Vilém Flusser who turned himself into Brazilian and foreigner in the world
at the same time. Flusser transformed philosophy into a philosophical fiction and charged it with the
same sardonic irony we associate with Kafka’s fiction. Because of his metamorphoses, he became a
fictional character himself, as Rainer Guldin and I pointed out in the biography we wrote about him.
Sérgio Paulo Rouanet called Vilém Flusser ironically a Meta-Švejk. Flusser did not consider himself a post-
philosopher – a Post-Husserl or Post-Vaihinger – but rather a Post-Kafka. In this sense, his philosophy is a
kind of a post-Kafkaesque fiction.

➔ Metamorfose (PDF 276.73 KB)

How to Face the Terror of Reason: From Philosophy to Literature

Gustavo Bernardo Krause

Keywords: Kafka / Hašek / fiction / the terror of reason / philosophy / literature

This paper explores the relationship of philosophy and literature, and the role of irony in the search of a
possible way out of the hell of the apparatus created by the terror of reason. Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa
from The Metamorphosis and Jaroslav Hašek’s Švejk from The Adventures of Brave Soldier Švejk pre-
figure the future and are in a way are ironical brothers of Vilém Flusser.

➔ The Terror of Reason (PDF 150.03 KB)

„Paradies und Hölle“. Vilém Flussers fabelhafte Expedition in die Abgründe

der Tiefsee und des Menschen
Robert Krause

Keywords: Environment / surface / octopus / theory of evolution / fiction / Heidegger

Flusser’s philosophical fiction Vampyroteuthis Infernalis develops a complex and paradoxical conception
of space and place, strongly inspired by Lamarckism and Darwinism and by his reading of Heidegger’s
Being and Time. Exploring these and further intellectual sources, scientific contexts and similar literary
scenes of submarine life, this paper reconstructs Flusser’s diabolical trip into the abyss and his intent to
overcome anthropocentrism. From the methodological point of view, the paper belongs to the field of
literary and cultural animal studies and focuses on topographical aspects included in Flusser’s hybrid tale
of a deep-sea squid. Thus, the intrinsic relationships between completely different appearing spaces and
species are highlighted.

➔ Paradies und Hölle (PDF 250.75 KB)

Meu bem, você não entendeu nada: a generosidade cética de Vilém Flusser
Gustavo Bernardo Krause

Keywords: Doubt / fiction / writing

The sentence “My dear, you didn’t understand nothing” was one of the preferred sentences of Vilém
Flusser in his dialogs with scholars and visitors. But this judgment was not used as a vain statement of
superiority. On the contrary: Flusser wanted to demonstrate the impossibility of any final truth,
underlining the necessity of doubt and of the fictional structure of all our perception. Flusser’s famous
sentence, apparently destructive, was not less than an unsuspected generosity, giving the scholars and
visitors back what most kinds of opinion eliminate, that is, the doubt and the phenomenological view to
see things from more than one perspective.

➔ Meu bem (PDF 177.95 KB)

Rhapsody in Blue. Vilém Flusser und der Vampyroteuthis Infernalis

Paola Bozzi

Keywords: Fable / fiction / fictionalism / Kraken / literature / Vaihinger

The depths of the sea, their obscure inhabitants and their mysteries have always been a rich source of
myths and metaphors for authors and philosophers. Fables about giant squ ids and monstrous octopuses
run through the history of literature and culture. The vampire squid is only a small phylogenetic relic,
but it provides a useful model for Flusser's hybrid philosophical fiction Vampyroteuthis Infernalis. Flusser
slips metaphor ically into the creature’s gelatinous skin in order to speculate on the paradigms of
postmodern life, measuring the abyss from the inside and producing a very peculiar, experimental form
of thinking and writing. In the present era of virtual reality and co mputer simulations, we experience
fiction as the only reality. According to Vaihinger's definition, fiction is a useful construct that is precisely
not real, but enables human beings to create and manipulate their environments. His philosophy of “ as
if ” is perhaps the fullest expression of fictionalism and shows its ambivalent potential.

➔ Rhapsody in Blue (PDF 169.27 KB)