Understanding Flusser, Understanding Modernism

The Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) has been recognized as a decisive past master in the emergence of contemporary media theory and media archeology. His work engages and also rethinks several mythologies of modernity, devising new methodologies, experimental literary practices, and expanded hermeneutics that trouble traditional practices of literary/literate knowledge, shared experience, reception, and communication.

Working within an expanded concept of modernism, Flusser presciently noted the power inherent in algorithmic information apparatuses to reshape our fundamental conceptions of culture and history. In an increasingly technological world, Flusser's form of experimental theory-fiction pits philosophy against cybernetics as it forces the category of "the human" to confront the inhuman world of animals and machines.

The contributors to Understanding Flusser, Understanding Modernism engage with the multiplicity of Flusser's thought as they provide a general analysis of his work, engage in comparative readings with other philosophers, and offer expanded conceptualizations of modernism. The final section of the volume includes an extended glossary clarifying the playful terminology used by Flusser, which will be a valuable resource for experts and students alike.

Auteur

Aaron Jaffe is Frances Cushing Ervin Professor of American Literature at Florida State University, USA. He is the author or editor of six previous books, including The Way Things Go: An Essay on the Matter of Second Modernism (2014).

Michael F. Miller is Visiting Lecturer in the Department of English Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He has published essays on contemporary literature, media theory, digital culture, and politics.

Rodrigo Martini is Lecturer in English at the University of Georgia, USA.

Contenu

List of Illustrations
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Aaron Jaffe, Florida State University, USA, Rodrigo Martini, University of Georgia, USA, Michael F. Miller, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
PART I: Processing Flusser

1. Does AI Have a Future?
   Rita Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, and Russell Samolsky, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
2. Design/Shape
   Anke Finger, University of Connecticut, USA
3. Flusser in Open Circuits: The Dialogic Capacity of Video Images
   Daniel Irrgang, Weizenbaum-Institute, Berlin, Germany
4. Flusser and Ars Electronica: Between and Beyond Cybernetics
   Daniel Raschke, Florida State University, USA
5. Flusser in the Light of Radiation
   Clint Wilson III, Rice University*, USA*
6. Games and Play: On Being Human in the Universe of Technical Images
   Nancy Roth, Independent Scholar, USA
7. Flusser's Philosophical Backgrounds
   Martha Schwendener, New York University, USA
8. Flusser's Quasi-Phenomenology
   Andreas Max Ströhl, Goethe Institute, North America
9. Migrants, Flâneurs, Critics: Flusserian Irony and the Genealogy of Modern Cynicism
   Alexander B. Adkins, San Jacinto College, USA
10. Vampyroteuthis infernalis as Media Theory
    Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, University of British Columbia, Canada
11. Posthistory Today: Historical Time and Virality after Flusser
    Charles M. Tung, Seattle University, USA
    PART II: Flusser's Expanded Modernism
12. Demonologies
    Laurence A. Rickels, European Graduate School Saas-Fee, Switzerland
13. An Intersubjective Style
    Frances McDonald, University of Louisville, USA
14. "Naked Little Spasms of the Self": In Search of an Authentic Gesture in Posthistorical Times
    Dominic Pettman, The New School, USA
15. The 'Pataphysical Span: Jarry and Flusser
    Judith Roof, Rice University, USA
16. Flusser's New Weird
    Keith Leslie Johnson, The College of William and Mary, USA
17. A Philosophy of Refraction: Flusser's Speculative Biology and the Study of Paramedia
    David Bering-Porter, The New School, USA
18. Everything Quantizes
    Kate Brideau, New York University, USA
19. Religious Telematics and the Archives of Memory
    K. Merinda Simmons, University of Alabama, USA
20. The Challenge of Flusser: Latinidad and Its Others
    John Ribó, Florida State University, USA
21. On Synthesis and Synthetic Reality: Post/Modernism in Flusser's Thinking
    Rainer Guldin, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
22. Fascism, Iconoclasm, and the Global Village
    Guy Stevenson, Goldsmiths and Queen Mary Colleges, University of London, UK
23. The Future of Writing
    David Golumbia, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
24. Flusser's Linguistic Briefcase
    Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe, Florida State University, USA
25. The Depressed Person and the Vampire Squid: Sonic Gestures in the Work of Flusser and David Foster Wallace
    Edward Comentale, Indiana University, USA
26. Cannibalistic Animals: Posthuman Natures in Flusser and Benjamin
    Erick Felinto, State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Brazil
27. Flusser's New World
    Aaron Jaffe, Florida State University, USA
    PART III: Flusser's Toolkit
28. Anti-Apparatus
    Melody Jue, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
29. Apparatus
    Blake Stricklin, University of Houston, Victoria, USA
30. Automation
    Seb Franklin, King's College London, UK
31. Cybernetics
    Heather A. Love, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
32. Dasein's Design
    Chris Michaels. Florida State University, USA
33. Ecology
    Derek Woods, University of British Columbia, Canada
34. Ethics
    Annie Lowe, Rice University, USA
35. Etymology
    Andrew Battaglia, Rice University, USA
36. Surface and Simulation
    Tom Tooley, Valencia College, USA
37. Technical Image
    Anaïs Nony, University College Cork, Ireland
38. Writing
    Andrew Pilsch, Texas A&M University, USA
39. Zetetic Maneuvers: Stalking the Continuum
    Adelheid Mers, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA
    Epilogue: Between Languages and Without Discipline: A 20th Century Intellect Drafted for the 21st
    Siegfried Zielinski, European Graduate School Saas-Fee, Switzerland, translated from the German by Daniel Raschke, Florida State University, USA