In this article I present a rich biography of Vilém Flusser (1920–1991) – Czech-Jewish media philosopher. However, I am interested not only in his life history, but also in his attitude to his own cultural identity. In the following paragraphs of the paper, I present the most important periods of his life: the Prague period, emigration, the Brazilian period, and his return to Europe. Each of these stages brought a new quality to Flusser’s life and work, even if it was related to tragic events. And since, in this author’s case, life was closely related to philosophy – the topics he tackled, the way he was philosophizing – this text also deals in part with Vilém Flusser as a theoretician.
PL
W artykule przedstawiam bogatą biografię Viléma Flussera (1920–1991) – filozofa mediów o czesko-żydowskich korzeniach. Interesują mnie jednak nie tylko jego koleje życiowe, lecz także stosunek do własnej tożsamości kulturowej. W kolejnych paragrafach prezentuję najważniejsze etapy jego życia: okres praski, emigrację, okres brazylijski oraz powrót do Europy. Każdy z nich wniósł do życia i twórczości Flussera nową wartość, nawet jeśli wiązał się z tragicznymi wydarzeniami. A ponieważ w przypadku tego autora życie było ściśle związane z filozofią – podejmowanymi tematami, sposobem filozofowania – tekst ten traktuje po części także o tym, jakim teoretykiem był Vilém Flusser.
In the text, the author deals with extensive issues of media-politics relations. Using the conceptual apparatus developed by Vilém Flusser, he shows through specific examples (the Romanian revolution, the presidential elections in the United States) the transformations in the social imagination that have occurred as a result of technological changes – primarily the transition from “television reign” to “taking control” by the so-called new media. He also looks to the future, forecasting how an autonomous technology (e.g. artificial intelligence) may soon further complicate the social and political context of the contemporary times.
This article aims at presenting general outline of, what is called here, Vilém Flusser’s philosophy of things and it arises from two different fields of interest. First one is the philosophy of design: reflexions on today’s status of objects that we can find in our environment; mostly, Flusser focuses on media and technology. Second field appears within Flusser’s phenomenology of gestures – a theory which deals with the interaction between man and objects; but the emphasis here is put on the way objects “produce” us – not the other way around. Those two fields are presented and interpreted in the first two paragraphs of this paper. The last part is devoted to four other theoreticians: Deyan Sudjic, Wolfgang Welsch, Lev Manovich and Bruno Latour. Here the author draws a parallel between those thinkers and Flusser in the context of the theory of design, aesthetics and others.
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