The Political Crisis of the Anti-Zionist Jewish Intellectual
This text is an excerpt is from his latest book, which focuses on Vilém Flusser to illuminate intellectual Jewish history in the second half of the twentieth century, and vice versa. Flusser also featured prominently in his previous book, Photography and Jewish History: Five Twentieth Century Cases (UPENN Press, 2022). By examining five major twentieth-century case studies—from science and philanthropy to art—that intersect Jewish history and the history of photography, the book adapted Flusser’s theoretical framework to historical study to demonstrate how photography reshaped major concepts in twentieth-century Jewish history. individuals as isolated entities destined to face death in solitude. Flusser ultimately resolved his personal dilemma of place and belonging by embracing Bodenlosigkeit, locating its final form within the realm of aesthetics. His sharp rejection of a grounded politics stood in stark contrast to Zionism, which asserted Boden (ground/land) was a prerequisite for political life. It also diverged fundamentally from Heidegger's philosophy, which linked the "right way" to Boden but was an impossible alternative for Flusser, who viewed Nazism as a biological-technological program. Flusser’s philosophy, which notably lacks concepts such as political life, citizenship, or the state, exposes a profound political crisis in the post-Holocaust condition. His anti-nationalism and anti-Zionism stemmed from a general rejection of nationalism as a false striving for security and a specific conviction that Zionism contradicted his ideal of Judaism. While structurally echoing pre-1918 anti-Zionist thought, Flusser's views diverged from the post-1948 Jewish intellectual mainstream, ultimately offering a distinctive, marginal perspective on the evolving history of Jewish opposition to Zionism.
Flusser e Kafka: diálogos em torno de aparelhos, funcionários e programas / Flusser and Kafka: Dialogues on Apparatuses, Functionaries and Programs
The article explores the dialogue between Flusser and Kafka, around the concepts of apparatus, functionary, and program. Starting from the understanding of Prague as a city that builds bridges, the text understands Flusser's thought as a bridge between past and future, referring to its genealogical beginnings in Prague’s literature. In a cross-reading of texts by the two authors, the concepts of apparatus, functionary and program emerge in their different aspects. The dialog with Kafka reveals an important source of Flusser’s thinking.