Thinking Further : Fragments of Communicology

The first English-language translation of Vilém Flusser’s final series of lectures: the definitive introduction to his methods and ideas in new media theory

In summer 1991, shortly before his death, Vilém Flusser gave a series of lectures as guest professor at Ruhr University Bochum at the invitation of Friedrich Kittler. Flusser intended for these lectures to be the definitive introduction to his “communicology,” the study of human communication and the means by which acquired information is saved, processed, and passed on. In Thinking Further, Aaron Jaffe and Michael F. Miller have curated “fragments” from these lectures―first published in German in 2008―to present the most exciting and timely parts of Flusser’s foundational contributions to what is now known as media studies.

These fragments capture Flusser’s engagements with a wide range of theories, approaches, and interventions, including ecocriticism, posthumanities, game theory, cybernetics, and translinguistic exchanges. Offering sustained engagements with the ideas of Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, and Jean Baudrillard, Thinking Further models possibilities for thinking through and clarifying the most obscure and obdurate implications of technology and modernity.

As they demonstrate Flusser’s contextual positionality and antiuniversalism, the writings presented here also underscore the pleasures and the power of his aphoristic style. Focusing less on Flusser-as-philosopher and more on his role as wry sage at the end of history, Thinking Further is a comprehensive but approachable introduction to his boundary-transcending exploration of the possibilities for communication, writing, and the human condition.

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Vilém Flusser (1920–1991) was a Czech-born Brazilian philosopher, writer, and journalist. The University of Minnesota Press has published translations of a dozen of his works, including Into the Universe of Technical Images, Does Writing Have a Future?, Gestures, and What If?.

Silvia Wagnermaier is cocreator, with Siegfried Zielinski, of the Vilém Flusser archive at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. She lives and works as a motoring journalist in Austria.

Siegfried Zielinski is Michel Foucault Professor for Techno-Culture and Media Archaeology at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee and visiting professor at Tongji University Shanghai.

Friedrich A. Kittler (1943–2011) was professor and chair of aesthetics and media history at Humboldt University, Berlin and author of Discourse Networks 1800/1900 and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter.

Aaron Jaffe is Frances Cushing Ervin Professor of American Literature at Florida State University.

Michael F. Miller teaches literature and literary theory in the Department of English Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Andrew Battaglia is a translator and independent scholar. He has taught at Rice University, the University of Montana, and Seattle University.

Daniel Raschke is visiting assistant professor of English at Bethel College, Kansas.