Flusserstudies.net

How to teach in the media environment: A reading of a Flusser lesser-known text from 1972

Luis Mauro Sá Martino

This paper outlines some aspects of Flusser’s concept of teaching as shown in some of his texts about education. It focuses mainly on a paper published in 1972 at the Revista Brasileira de Filosofia, titled ‘How to philosophize in mass culture?’. Grounded on a close reading of the paper, it argues that Flusser addresses three aspects of teaching that remain particularly important to contemporary teaching: (1) he sees culture as a living environment, and challenges the division on ‘high culture’, ‘popular’ and ‘mass culture’; (2) in order to be meaningful to students, teaching should treat mass culture seriously, both as reference and object; (3) teachers should not be afraid to include mass culture in their courses, as it is the source of the student’s main cultural codes. These elements are discussed against the social and media background of Flusser’s article.