Miguel Ángel Luna Vilchis
Miguel Ángel Luna Vilchis is a PhD candidate in Human Sciences, with a specialization in Discourse and Culture, at the Universidad Austral de Chile, where he is developing his dissertation research on media archaeology and genealogy as a methodological approach. He holds a master’s degree in visual arts from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. A specialist in media theory and its implications for contemporary societies, he combines his work as a researcher with his career as a lecturer. His notable publications include Constelaciones Imaginales (Universidad Uni Achieta, Brazil) and Alucinaciones numéricas. Entre la operatividad imperativa y la contingencia informativa (Spain), as well as other research articles published in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.
Articles of Miguel Ángel Luna Vilchis
La laberíntica historia del Diablo. Primera recepción de Flusser en México / The Labyrinthine History of the Devil. The First Reception of Flusser in Mexico
In 1960s, Mexico has a period of notable cultural development known as the “Latin American Boom". This literary movement was pushed by numerous young writers and consolidated by various publishing houses, with prominent figures who played a driving role, such as Efraín Huerta and Octavio Paz. It was within this context that a correspondence between Octavio Paz and Vilém Flusser was established in 1966. Based on this epistolary exchange, we propose a comparative reading of Paz's The Labyrinth of Solitude and Flusser's History of the Devil, with the aim of analyzing the conceptual and biographical convergences that emerge in both works.
Emphasis is placed on the shared experience of exile and solitude during both authors' youth, as well as their interest in subjects such as Zen Buddhism. Likewise, the philosophical perspective of their works is highlighted, which we consider to be phenomenological in both authors. The essay offers deliberately reflective guidelines on how the intellectual dialogue between Paz and Flusser might have developed, had that first contact given rise to a successful collaboration. The fundamental aim of this work, therefore, is to establish a link between these two intellectual universes, moving beyond the limitation of their brief epistolary exchange. Finally, we wish to offer readers of Vilém Flusser an entry point into the work of Octavio Paz, and vice versa, as well as to extend an invitation toward a broader and renewed reception of Flusser's work in Mexico.
El extraño señor llamado Vilém F.
This essay is a reflection from various perspectives on the life and work of Vilém Flusser. Structured as a series of scenes, it connects biographical and geographical reflections, ranging from his escape from Prague, his residence in Brazil, and his return to the city of his birth, with considerations on the peculiar structure and reception of his work, marked by its thematic and disciplinary heterogeneity. Through these scenes, the figure of a nomadic thinker, “groundless” (bodenlos) emerges, one who evades closed systems, inherited traditions of thought, and stable foundations. His life and work are permeated by displacement, discomfort, and constant challenge. Each section emphasizes a different aspect: his relationship with art and design, the playful character of his writing, his polyglot practice and its influence on his creative process, and his way of thinking about technology in dialogue with phenomenology, cybernetics, and philosophy. The aim is not to fix Flusser into a single definitive category as writer or philosopher, but to demystify him, placing him as a man of our present, highlighting his condition as a radical contemporary capable of reading our time as a Heraclitean flow, turbulent and labyrinthine.