Abstract

The short section included in this issue of Flusser Studies is an excerpt from my dissertation. It is part of the first chapter, a biography of Flusser. The text attempts to sketch a few of the countless influences Prague and Central European cultural traditions have exerted on the young Vilém Flusser. It is preceded by a section on his Prague origins. The dissertation also includes a second, related, excursus titled “Currents of Media History II. – The Prague Flusser Left behind.” The dissertation was conceived as a general view on Flusser’s work and life that could also serve as an introduction to his thought. From my point of view, Flusser should be considered, above all, a phenomenologist of different forms of communication. The dissertation begins with a biographical introduction followed by a study of various aspects central to his thinking: media, code, apparatus, and dialogue. Furthermore, the history of his reception is dealt with extensively. The phenomenology of media, the philosophy of communication, and questions of cultural anthropology are reinterpreted within a Czech-German and Jewish Habsburg-Austrian environment that proved to be a fertile ground for the development of Flusser’s interests. In fact, Flusser can be regarded as one of the last representatives of the short but amazingly rich intellectual blossoming of the Jewish-Czech-German culture that was abruptly truncated by the German invasion of Prague in the spring of 1939. Taking into account the massive impact these cultural traditions of Old Central Europe had on Flusser, I argue that, in the development of Flusser’s thinking, a projection of Prague’s past onto the Brazilian future is recognizable. The source of this projection also sheds light on the consequences Flusser drew from the failure of the “Brazil Project” in the early 1970s