Le jeu et son pouvoir subversif chez Debord et les situationnistes et chez Flusser / Play and Its Subversive Power in the Writings of Guy Debord, the Situationists and Vilém Flusser
The relation between the Situationists and Guy Debord, and Flusser has never been seriously explored: they were never in contact, but one can find that they had some ideas in common. This essay attempts to analyze one of these commonalities, their approach to play and games, in the light of the theories of Johan Huizinga and of Roger Caillois. The Situationists placed the game at the center of their approach, seeing in it a revolutionary tool that could help change the world radically. Flusser initially saw the act of playing more as a form of communication within the telematic society, but progressively he saw it also as a form of rebellion against the apparatus. Both the situationists and Flusser emphasized the creative dimension of the game, its subversive power, and the profanation and the quest for freedom that games could empower.
But an important difference between them is that the Situationists fostered a collective game —a celebration in which everyone should participate, where time and space are suspended. Flusser, on the other hand, saw playing against the apparatus more as an individual endeavor, where the single actor does not respect the rules of the program and plays against it. However, the point remains the same: to play the game and use it against the system—whatever that system may be.
Jogos / Spiele / Games
In this essay, Flusser identifies human beings as homo ludens, the playing animal, asserting that the capacity to play is their defining feature. He notes at the outset that it is no longer the difference between humans and animals that is at issue, but a difference between humans and their apparatuses. In supporting his claim, he defines a game as system of elements that regularly combine, then goes on to describe categories of games within which the whole of human communication can be aligned. He focusses on three examples -- chess, language (he chooses Portuguese), and science, using them to introduce terms, e.g. “elements,” “competence,” “repertoire” and “universe,” that apply to games in general but also facilitate comparison and contrast. Above all, he underscores the need for human beings to be aware of the games in which they participate, for only in such an awareness is it possible to actually play a game -- that is, expand and change it, create something new -- as opposed to being played by it, caught in the operations of a fixed, stolid, apparatus. First published in German in 1968, the text introduces terms that Flusser developed further in subsequent writings.
Rethinking Interology with Flusser
Motivated as much by a deep concern with the rapidly evolving human condition as by intellectual curiosity, this article reveals the problem-driven and futurological nature of Flusserian interology [Deleuze]. It proposes that compared to traditional ontology, the notion of interality and the dynamics of interology offer us a more adequate way of thinking through our situation in the here and now and in the immediate future. The secondary motive is to turn Flusser’s media philosophy into a pointillist verbal art, a techno-ethics, and an intertopia befitting the digital era.
O filósofo que gostava de jogar: o pensamento dialógico de Vilém Flusser e a sua busca pela liberdade
This article examines the role of playing in Vilém Flusser's thinking. In addition to a deeper conceptual insight, this analyses conducted on the philosopher's work investigates how he understood play as a specific manner of being in the world. In this regard, this paper aims to gain insight into how Flusser accepted this kind of existence for himself. His texts, his thoughts and his methods are based on a playful attitude towards culture, language, his references and towards his readers. A closer look at this specific aspect of Flusser's writing shows how the writing itself materializes the philosophy it suggests. The analyses are based on three key concepts: dialog, image as a concept, and the bureaucrat/employee; concepts which allow the understanding of how the playful dimension of Flusser's thinking can be important in order to figure out how he sees in the concept of the Homo Ludens a feasible ethical posture for the practice of freedom in contemporary society.
Juego e imaginación en Vilém Flusser
In several texts Vilém Flusser argues that if we had to define some specificity that characterizes the human being nowadays it would be homo ludens, because of the multiple cultural revolutions that have occurred, which have radically altered man’s existence, especially his imagination. The argument outlined in this paper is that the category of play not only reveals a specificity of contemporary man, but also represents his philosophical gesture. It is a central notion for Flusser’s criticism of the apparatus as a technical device.
Vilém Flusser: Brasil y la búsqueda del sujeto-proyecto
Vilém Flusser’s intellectual and academic development took place during thirty one years he lived in Brazil. This period was especially relevant in the consolidation of his philosophical projects. This essay works on the hypothesis that Flusser’s analysis of the human condition in the post-historic, post-human, and post-modern ages, as well as the phenomenological search of what he named the new kind of human being, has its roots in this Brazilian period. One of the most read and analyzed subjects of the last European period of this author – the transformation of the subject into a project – acquires new meanings if it is considered and approached from the internal logic of the philosophical bond between these two stages or periods.