Flusseriana. An Intellectual Toolbox.

Abstract

Freestyle thinking - that is Vilem Flusser's intellectual modus operandi: challenging and offensive, paradoxical and audacious. His thought knows no disciplines or subjects, nor does it pay tribute to other academic frameworks or rituals. Above all else his thought wants to intervene in ongoing cultural and artistic processes and influence them. In order to achieve this, no closed theoretical systems are necessary, only open, operative structures. The Flusseriana is a toolbox capable of being developed and expanded. It contains more than 200 "thinkthings" (Denkdinge) of all kinds: particularities like "Indian Summer," "Atlas," "Submissiveness," "Animal," or "Mediterranean Sea"; condensed Flusserian thought concerning the big eternal questions such as "History," "Language," "Myth," and "Religion"; the central concepts of his media analysis, including "Apparatus," "Abstraction," "Cybernetics," and "Telematics"; as well as Flusser's own neologisms - "Communicology," "Universe of Dots," the old and the new "Imaginations." More than 100 authors produced the entries under these lemmata. That is dialogic practice - entirely in the spirit of the philosophical writer from Prague.