On Vilém Flusser’s Idiosyncratic Use of Commas and Round Brackets
This essay explores a dimension of Vilém Flusser’s writing and thinking that has not received any attention so far: his idiosyncratic use of punctuation. Punctuation marks are more than just a way of structuring sentences. They can also be seen as gestures, as embodiments of specific mental attitudes. In this sense, Flusser’s frequent combination of round brackets included within commas articulates a fundamental tension in his thinking. These punctuation clusters are the very site where two contrary tendencies of his thinking meet and collide: the constant creative push forward and the continuous flow of the ongoing reflection, on the one hand, and the persistent urge to stray off from the main path through frequent associative eruptions on the other. It is the conflict between circles and lines, between the sprawl of tangential offshoots and the continuous attempt to impose linearity by chopping off the outgrowths, the tension between losing oneself in writing and the wish to keep in control. As Flusser calls it in “The Gesture of Writing”, it is the tenacious struggle between the ramifications of the ‛branching thought tree’ and the formal compulsion of the ‛Mesopotamian brick’. The essay also contains a detailed analysis of Flusser’s “The Gesture of Writing”, “Le geste d’écrire” and “O gesto de escrever” that shows how the use of this specific punctuation cluster evolves in the process of self-translation.