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alienation

Alienation

Alienation follows from the inversion of images and the world. In the earliest stage of human communication, the image elucidated the world. Drawing on Heidegger’s notion of ein Schritt zurück, Flusser proposes the first images at Lascaux to be instructions for hunting animals. The situation of overwhelming need in which the human exists is held at abeyance through the image that directs. As Flusser declares, “the image transforms the world into a scene.” But, the image grows in importance until it eclipses the world that it depicts. In German, die Bilder verstellen was sie vorstellen. This inversion effects a profound alienation in which the image no longer clarifies but constrains.

In particular, forms, alienate becomes idolatry, although it is unclear if the two terms are wholly synonymous. In the video lecture Television Image and Political Space, Flusser imputes the development of linear writing to the historical moment in which idolatry, as identified by the Jewish prophets and pre-Socratic philosphers, but such invention does not banish the idolatrous image. Rather, after a period in which images illustrate texts, linear writing banishes the image at the advent of moveable type: “they were eliminated from our culture. They were enclosed in glorified ghettos called museums.” To follow Flusser’s logic, the original alienation of the world persists through each stage of development. Alienation is then an ongoing mechanism rather than a term synonymous with idolatry proper.

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alienation.txt · Last modified: 2021/11/05 17:47 by 127.0.0.1