Towards no body – traces of Flusser’s psychology
Pivotal in Vilém Flusser’s language philosophy and fundamental for his media theory are his reflections on psychology. Rooted in his first unpublished work Das 20. Jahrhundert [The 20th Century] unfolding in Language and Reality and summarized in The History of the Devil Flusser’s thoughts on psychology meander from his early writings to his late articles. In the two articles “Wahrnehmung” [Perception] (1990) and “Das Universum der Technik als Spiegel und/oder als Verschleierung menschlicher Absicht” [The Universe of Technology as Mirror and/or Concealment of the Intention of Man] (1987), both published in the journal “Praktische Psychologie”, Flusser connects the linguistic ontology of perception to the psychological aspect of (digital) information. In Language and Reality Flusser says: “data are being compiled and compared in order to be computed. We are a generation of accountants who are in the process of becoming a line of computers” (2018:9). Flusser categorizes Western languages as fusional, logically organized and translatable. Through science and philosophy, they have the potential to be transformed into an universal, abstract, artificial language (2018: 37-39). In his article, Eckhard Geitz connects the psychological dots in Flusser’s thinking – from his early philosophical writings to his information philosophy and the call for a new anthropology in his late texts.