Guido Bröckling
Universität Leipzig, Germany
Guido Bröckling was born in 1978 in Paderborn (Germany). He studied communication and media studies, cultural studies and (media)psychology in Münster and Berlin, following his apprenticeship as an electrical engineer. After completing the graduate program in 2007, he worked at the Vilém_Flusser_Archive at the University of the Arts, Berlin. From 2008 to 2012 he pursued his PhD in Communication at the University of the Arts, supervised by Prof. Dr. Siegfried Zielinski and Prof. Dr. Bernd Schorb (University of Leipzig). Bröckling’s dissertation focused on the construction of reality between TV-discourses and Net-dialogues and was published in 2012 (Das handlungsfähige Subjekt zwischen TV-Diskurs und Netz-Dialog). He has worked as a media and communication advisor since. He is currently at work on a research project about digital media literacy during the apprenticeship of underprivileged youths. He also researches and teaches media education and media theory at the University of Leipzig. His research interests also include media philosophy and its meaning for everyday practice, the media philosophy and communication theory in the thinking of Vilém Flusser, and media literacy and sociology.
Articles of Guido Bröckling
Vilém Flusser als Werkzeugkasten – quer- und weitergedacht
Das handlungsfähige Projekt? oder: Die Frage nach der Subjekthaftigkeit des Projekts in der Menschwerdung. Zwischen Geste, Projektion und Verantwortung
In the thinking of Vilém Flusser, the question of subjectivity is linked to the question of being human (Mensch-Sein) or becoming human (Mensch-Werden). The human subject should be considered as dependent on media’s cultural and anthropological conditions. In this context, changes in media conditions lead to changes of the human subject. Flusser calls this process a media-cultureanthropological evolution. According to this thesis, the human being is no longer defined as a subject in relation to an object but rather as a “project in a (second) incarnation” (Menschwerdung). The human subject is progressively freed from its dependency on an objective world. Therefore, the dichotomy of subject and object disappears and our existential condition of being in the world (In-der-Welt-Sein) change. We give up the idea of a given and still standing world in favor of an inter-subjective construction, in which the “I”, “You,” and “It” turn out to be projections. The question is: are we still able to talk about the ability to act (Handlungsfähigkeit) in the context of a post-historical project? Isn’t acting a genuine gesture/expression of the understanding of the “subject of objects,” and of agency in the “objective world”?