Márcio Seligmann-Silva
Unicamp, Universidade Estatual de Campinas, Brazil
Márcio Seligmann-Silva holds a Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin and a post-doctorate from Yale University. He is professor of Literary Theory at Unicamp and a researcher for CNPq. His publications include: Ler o Livro do Mundo. Walter Benjamin: romantismo e crítica poética (Iluminuras, 1999); Adorno (PubliFolha, 2003); and O Local da Diferença (Editora 34, 2005). He edited the following volumes: História, Memória, Literatura: o Testemunho na Era das Catástrofes (UNICAMP, 2003) and Palavra e Imagem, Memória e Escritura (Argos, 2006).
Articles of Márcio Seligmann-Silva
As utopias de Flusser
For Flusser, Auschwitz revealed “the potential utopia embedded in our culture. For the first time in our history we can feel that the utopia towards which we strive […] is the extermination camp”. And he concluded: “There can be no political paradise. Because political consciousness is unhappy, every consciousness is unhappy.” This paper argues that his media theory intended to “project us beyond the [Western] project”, which ended in Auschwitz. The utopian traces of his work come to light in his engagement with Brazil, in his informational theory, in his formulation of a positive “Heimatlosigkeit” and of “post-history”. He was not a classic utopist, nor a Marxist, but someone engaged in the design of a new world free from fascism.
De Flusser a Benjamin – do pós-aurático às imagens técnicas
This text presents some elective affinities and differences between the works of two powerful media theoreticians of the 20th century: Water Benjamin and Vilém Flusser. Both authors have shaped original perspectives on the relationship between art and technology. While holding a special place for the theory of photography, both have reflected upon the history of writing and its transformations during Modernity. In addition, both Benjamin and Flusser dedicated important texts to the question of translation and the philosophy of language. This text also examines the differences between the Benjaminian theory of writing and image reproduction connected to his concept of post-auratic images, and, on the other hand, the Flusserian theory of technical and post-historical images.