From Sound to Sign: Writing as Worldmaking in Vilém Flusser and Walter J. Ong
Writing changes the world. Or so thought scholars Vilém Flusser and Walter J. Ong in the second half of the 20th century. This paper explores the ontological and epistemological consequences of the written word according to the complementary views of these two authors. The pre-eminence of language for the constitution of reality was a stance assumed by Vilém Flusser already in his first book (1963) and later developed throughout his career. In his view, linear thought as we know it now became possible as a result of the technology of writing. Flusser’s reading deeply resonates with the Ong’s study of the transition from oral to literate cultures, as the latter posits that the written record allowed for a reformulation of thinking itself, an opening of the possibilities we know today. Although they wrote in different contexts, the questions they tackle and the conclusions they reach have profound similarities. For comparison, this study relies mainly on ideas found mainly in two seminal publications: Língua e Realidade [Language and Reality] by Vilém Flusser, and Orality and Literacy: the technologizing of the word, by Walter J. Ong.
Um diálogo entre Flusser e Heidegger: o ser no universo
To Flusser, technical images create different meanings and realities, leading to an inversion of our “being-in-the-world” to a “being-face-to-face-with-the-image.” In this situation, the distinction between real and imagined, then, would no longer make sense, since only the image itself becomes something concrete. Thus, according to the author, we end up facing back the objective world. Regarding this statement, we propose, in this paper, through a dialog between Heidegger and Flusser, a discussion about being in the universe of technical images.
Bazin, Flusser y la Estética de la fotografia / Bazin, Flusser and the Aesthetics of Photography
Both the film theoretician Bazin and the philosopher of photography Flusser follow a well-known tradition according to which aesthetic experience belongs in the realm of the extraordinary. In this way, that which makes a photograph an aesthetic object is its link to the extraordinary. Nevertheless, Flusser deals with photography within the frame of a general theory concerning technical images. Such images have, according to him, a quantitative structure. Consequently, the extraordinary character of photography would vary in a quantitative way. Furthermore, again according to Flusser, there is a reversal of meaning taking place within the realm of technical images: the technical image is existentially meaningful in itself, not because of what it represents. So, in the case of photography the meaning vector does not point to the world but to the image itself: the image is real, not its object. Of course, this idea implies a complete break with Bazin’s ontology of the photographic image. According to Bazin the image and its object share the same nature, the way a fingerprint does. Photographs, furthermore, awaken our admiration for the object, and are mostly used only for that.
Uma reinterpretação linguística da ontologia
This essay intends to explore the ontological consequences of Vilém Flusser’s philosophy of language that he introduced in his first works, written in Portuguese and published in Brazil. This paper will critically examine its main topics: his definition of speech as an act and language as an expanding human presence in the cosmos; linguistic performance as the most dignifying human characteristic and the identification of reality with language; and finally, the thesis that language creates, shapes and disseminates reality. Starting out from an instrumental definition of language, Flusser is compelled to define the world as secondary in relation to language. This paper tries to examine the underlying tensions or paradoxes of such a position as part of Flusser’s dramatic rhetoric strategy, exploring the dangers of an extremely idealistic position sustaining the project of a linguistic ontology.