Flusser the Writer

Flusser is usually described as a philosopher.   By “trade,” he was  a critic — of language, photography, film, art,  design, and social practice.  He was also a teacher and someone who wrote critically about education.  Neswald (Elizabeth Neswald, Medien-Theologie, Das Werk Vilem Flussers, Koln: Bolau, 1988) argues that his work constitutes a theology. I’d like to argue that he was a writer, one who used writing to project ideas, forms, practices as forms of consciousness–sometimes past, but more often yet to come. In both his critical essays and his fictional projects he starts from an object, or a type of object, and from it projects a whole social context, a whole consciousness. He slips away from the careful discipline of professional philosophy, never quite says anything very specific about art or photography or film, always “frames” a social practice in terms of another, as something fluid–one possibility among others.