writing and translation
Publishers don’t necessarily ask authors — or translators — before deciding what title to give any particular book. Lambert Wiesing and I assumed that the title of the German book Luxus, would be the English...
The German verb “einbilden” is ordinarily translated into English as “imagine.” But at one point in Into the Universe of Technical Images, Flusser calls attention to the difference between “einbilden” and the cognate “imaginieren”. Expressing his gratitude to Kant for...
The German word “Entwerfen” — drafting or drawing — is closely related, a kind of reversal of the verb “werfen,” which is to throw, or hurl, or toss. Flusser uses the association to describe...
This is the title of an article (Stephen Nachmanovitch, New Literary History, Vol. 40, No. 1, Winter, 2009), pp. 1-24.) about play in general, but specifically about Gregory Bateson’s theoretical approach to it – involving...
There are many thoughtful and suggestive definitions of “culture,” but I can’t remember any thoughts about the minimum. What is necessary and/or sufficient about a given set of circumstances for it to be rightly...
Before I learned of Ginzburg’s book, I used the phrase “family lexicon”(incorrectly, I think in retrospect) as the domain name for a website of family photographs. The project crashed and burned for the best...