The Novel Called “Science” / Der Roman der Wissenschaft
In these two essays that were originally written for the French journal Crises, Flusser discusses the relationship between science and fiction. Both texts are preceded by an epigraph that reappears in Angenommen (1989), Isaac Newton’s “Hypotheses non fingo.” This means that they were probably written in the late 1980s within the context of Angenommen. The history of science can be conceived as a powerful drama, an irresistible constantly swelling river flowing towards the all-encompassing ocean of knowledge. But this history can also be described as a series of answers to fundamental questions: what for, why and how. It has become increasingly clear that the only important questions are not final or causal questions, but formal questions. The universe of scientific discourse is a fiction, a game, which is ultimately an absurd game. “Newton was still able to say that he did not invent his hypotheses freely. Such metaphysical faith in a concrete reality which sustains science has become untenable ever since Kant. […] An inversion of the vectors of significance is in the making: no longer does scientific discourse mean the world, but the concrete world now means the universe of formal discourse. […] Such a view shows science to be a novel in two different meanings of that term: Its history is a novel of questioning, and its result is the transformation of concrete reality into science fiction.”
Angenommen (Vermutung, jetzt!) /Angenommen – Kurz und gut / Now suppose / Angenommen. Einleitende Bedenken / Angenommen. Einleitung / Suppose that. Preliminary doubts / Suponhamos. Dùvidas preliminaries /Suppose that. Introductory considerations / ...
The first text published here, “Angenommen (Vermutung jetzt!)”, is a German translation of “Now suppose” with an introductory comment by William Hanff. It is possibly one of the seeds from which the other texts we are publishing here originated and at the same time the initial spark for the idea of a special issue about Flusser’s book Angenommen. The Portuguese and the English versions of Angenommen, which consist only of nine scenarios, were not finished. On the other hand, Flusser wrote two German versions, a first incomplete one and a second one with the final twenty-two scenarios. In preparation for the book edition of Angenommen, Flusser wrote several short essays and opening chapters in German, English, and Portuguese, constantly changing the title, the subtitle, and the content. Some of these texts bear an epigraph by Isaac Newton – “Hypotheses non fingo” – some do not. This quote was later included in the first German edition of the book published in 1989. The first two essays of this series are probably “Angenommen” and “Now suppose”. They are longer than most of the following texts and have the same beginning. However, the English version, that is slightly shorter and was most probably written after the German one, introduces on the second page the notion of an armed terrorist running towards the future. In the following versions, this image was moved to the beginning. Two more German versions, “Angenommen. Einleitung” and “Angenommen. Einleitende Bedenken” followed, along with two related English versions, “Suppose that. Preliminary doubts” and “Suppose that. Introductory considerations”, as well as a Portuguese variant, “Suponhamos. Dùvidas preliminaries”. Add to this the short essay “What if? A series of scenarios in search of images” and two other related texts “Randerscheinungen” and “Kurz und gut” which was published in “zeitmitschrift. Journal für Ästhetik & Politik” (7/1, 1990: 16–22). A polyglot parallel reading of all the different variants of the opening chapter and the other related texts that finally led to the publication of Angenommen in 1989 allows a fascinating insight into the hesitations and complexities of Flusser’s self-translating writing process.
Experiment und Versprechen – Über die Entgrenzung des Denkens
A speculative impulse is inherent in or precedes every experiment, presumably every thought. The hoped-for promise of an answer, a solution, a proof, is thus built on an idea of mental outgrowth. It is characterised by not-knowing, from which it takes its course (cf. Busch et al. 2020). The starting point of this paper is the experiment Vampyroteuthis infernalis (Flusser / Bec 1987) as a model of a fabulatory, creative epistemology (Bozzi 2007), which at the same time functions as a symbol of human existence in postmodernity. Part scientific treatise, part parody, part philosophical discourse, part fable, this work presents itself as an im/possible form of speculative research and exploratory speculation at the same time. Flusser thus provides fruitful impulses for the persistently discussed approaches of experimental and practice-based research in the formative disciplines, such as design, art or architecture, which are discussed in this paper as well as a possibly related disruption of knowledge hegemonies.
Vilém Flusser, escritor-pensador. Modos de la escritura en El universo de las imagines técnicas
This article is part of a larger investigation about three “writer-thinkers”: Giorgio Agamben (Rome, 1942), Héctor Libertella (Bahía Blanca, 1945 – Buenos Aires, 2006), and Vilém Flusser (Praga, 1920 - 1991). As a “writer-thinker” Vilém Flusser proposes that these notions are reversible, in the same way that he stated that “active” and “passive” were no longer differentiable. His essays are based upon a strong reflection on language, which is made through the process of writing. In many ways, he uses writing to think, and thinking to write. This paper further explores his use of etymology, definitions, series, as well as the nature of writing and fiction, in order to write and think.
A metamorfose de Kafka em Flusser
The most famous literary metamorphosis is Kafka’s short eponymous tale published in 1915. For more than a hundred years now, the first sentence of The Metamorphosis has been provoking an infinite series of metamorphoses: in culture, literature, as well as in readers and writers. Among the writers most affected by the event, we find Vilém Flusser who turned himself into Brazilian and foreigner in the world at the same time. Flusser transformed philosophy into a philosophical fiction and charged it with the same sardonic irony we associate with Kafka’s fiction. Because of his metamorphoses, he became a fictional character himself, as Rainer Guldin and I pointed out in the biography we wrote about him. Sérgio Paulo Rouanet called Vilém Flusser ironically a Meta-Švejk. Flusser did not consider himself a post-philosopher – a Post-Husserl or Post-Vaihinger – but rather a Post-Kafka. In this sense, his philosophy is a kind of a post-Kafkaesque fiction.
How to Face the Terror of Reason: From Philosophy to Literature
This paper explores the relationship of philosophy and literature, and the role of irony in the search of a possible way out of the hell of the apparatus created by the terror of reason. Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis and Jaroslav Hašek’s Švejk from The Adventures of Brave Soldier Švejk pre-figure the future and are in a way are ironical brothers of Vilém Flusser.
„Paradies und Hölle“. Vilém Flussers fabelhafte Expedition in die Abgründe der Tiefsee und des Menschen
Flusser’s philosophical fiction Vampyroteuthis Infernalis develops a complex and paradoxical conception of space and place, strongly inspired by Lamarckism and Darwinism and by his reading of Heidegger’s Being and Time. Exploring these and further intellectual sources, scientific contexts and similar literary scenes of submarine life, this paper reconstructs Flusser’s diabolical trip into the abyss and his intent to overcome anthropocentrism. From the methodological point of view, the paper belongs to the field of literary and cultural animal studies and focuses on topographical aspects included in Flusser’s hybrid tale of a deep-sea squid. Thus, the intrinsic relationships between completely different appearing spaces and species are highlighted.
Meu bem, você não entendeu nada: a generosidade cética de Vilém Flusser
The sentence “My dear, you didn’t understand nothing” was one of the preferred sentences of Vilém Flusser in his dialogs with scholars and visitors. But this judgment was not used as a vain statement of superiority. On the contrary: Flusser wanted to demonstrate the impossibility of any final truth, underlining the necessity of doubt and of the fictional structure of all our perception. Flusser’s famous sentence, apparently destructive, was not less than an unsuspected generosity, giving the scholars and visitors back what most kinds of opinion eliminate, that is, the doubt and the phenomenological view to see things from more than one perspective.
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.