On Flusser’s Struggle with Nihilism
Flusser’s work has been the object of various one-sided and selective interpretations. However, overcoming bottomlessness is at the core of his life’s work. He resorted to strategies like play, dialogue, contemplation, celebration, ritual, translation, and culture but knew they did not solve the problem of the absurd human condition, of being sentenced to death and oblivion. Flusser was aware of this contradiction; the freedom he achieved beyond bottomlessness was a desperate one. Bottomlessness is a prerequisite for freedom, but its repression is necessary for survival. Instead of choosing either suicide or orthopraxis, Flusser saw human communication, dialogue, “as a means to create meaning and as a method for the survival in the Other”.