While the world used to be seen as an object or
a process, the world today is perceived as a eld
of relation. Consequently, Vilém Flusser believes
society is experienced as a web of relationships.
Nevertheless, he maintains that we are actually
witnessing a mass-depoliticization rather than
seeing the possibilities offered by intersubjective
dialogue, altruism, and political responsibility
for one another. To explain this surprising
contradiction, Flusser claims the problem lies
“in the model of field that supports our notion
of ‘field’” (Post-History, 2013, p. 152), because
in this “dynamic, complex model” (ibid.) relationships
ramify through knots of familial and
social relationships. Social categories, such as
family or people, as knots of relations that form
and deform, are experienced as a social game
– as a black box with input and output that can
be cybernetically manipulated – which has the
tendency to disappear entropically.
According to the “ eld model” from which the mythical and historical dimensions of society have been removed, the feeling that, increasingly, relationships are becoming looser and looser results in this putative freedom being accompanied by a feeling of loneliness. Thus the small minority that notices that freedom is lacking, replaces the fidelity of the mythical universe with responsible commitment as a ludic strategy. As the eld model is not the only model to capture our being-in-the-world, Flusser describes a further one: he assumes that we are capable of recognizing other possibilities, and of preparing ourselves to grasp the changes within ourselves that happen when we encounter others. Flusser believes that an ars amatoria – subterraneously linked to the ars moriendi – can make us open to those changes brought about by uncommon encounters with others.
Original article by José Eugenio Menezes