Suponhamos: cenários para uma ética flusseriana / Suppose that: Scenarios for a Flusserian Ethics
This essay focuses on the formal aspects of Flusser’s Angenommen. The first part provides the general outline of the book and the second discusses its relationship to other initiatives by Flusser, both authorial (Vampyroteuthis Infernalis) and collaborative (Joan Fontcuberta’s plants, Louis Bec’s sulfanogrades and Guimarães Rosa’s garças). The third part discusses the ethical dimension of the book especially Flusser’s notion of engagement. The idea is to associate the positions of the two main characters, the terrorist and the futurologist, with Flusser’s own situation when he decided to leave Brazil and return to Europe in the early 1970s. Flusser rejects engagement (the terrorist) and scientific theory (the futurologist), but also seems to suggest that the third position – that of the artist –, the ideal synthesis, is not yet given. The artist’s situation has no place, it is improbable, but it is not utopian - without topos. Utopia is next to science fiction. It is a projection of an imaginary world that does not serve as knowledge. Flusser’s focus, in Angenommen and other works is on the improbability of love, or, as he points out in a letter to Mira Schendel, on aisthesis as a method of political criticism. Flusser's ethics have not yet reached the present.
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.