Paola Bozzi
Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
Professor Dr. Paola Bozzi (PhD, Berlin 1996) teaches German Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Milan (Università degli Studi di Milano), Italy. She held an International Flusser Lecture in 2007 and is author of the first Italian monograph on Vilém Flusser, entitled Vilém Flusser. Dal soggetto al progetto: libertà e cultura dei media (Torino 2007), as well as of “Durch fabelhaftes Denken”: Evolution, Gedankenexperiment, Science und Fiction; Vilém Flusser, Louis Bec und der Vampyroteuthis infernalis (Köln 2008). Research interests include: cultural studies, gender studies, philosophy and literature, Baroque, 18th and 20th century German literature and aesthetics.
Articles of Paola Bozzi
Naturalmente artificiale. Natura e cultura a volo d’uccello
What can still be defined as ‘authentic’ in our world today? Is it true that we are interested only in the ‘authentic’ nature (or what we think it is)? What does ‘authentic’ mean in relation to nature? In the essays of Vogelflüge, published for the first time in São Paulo in 1979 under the title Natural: mente, Vilém Flusser investigates the paradoxical connection between the concepts of authenticity and artificiality, proposing the cultural form of nature as a model of the natural form of culture. As occasional philosophy from a bird’s-eye perspective, the volume is the expression of an experimental method of thought and writing, which corresponds to the essentially utopian nature of the human being. The full postmodern consciousness of the difference between the need for authenticity and the impossibility of satisfying it, explains Flusser’s phenomenologically distanced, yet poetic approach to the natural simulacra of his own culture.
Rhapsody in Blue. Vilém Flusser und der Vampyroteuthis Infernalis
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.