Animality
Animals, especially marine creatures, always
fascinated Vilém Flusser. Probably the most famous
of these is the main character of his unusual
book, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis (2011–2012),
a gigantic squid that lives in abysmal caves on
the bottom of the ocean and uses bioluminescence
to move about in absolute darkness.
Flusser’s interest in animality emerged at the latest
in 1964. In his article “Um Mundo Fabuloso”
[A Fabulous World], published in the newspaper
O Estado de São Paulo (1964, reprinted in: Ficções
Filosóficas, 1998), experience with animals is presented
in a way that would become characteristic
of Flusser’s work as a whole: as a dialogue between
a human individual and diverse possible
antipodes. When compared in a debate about
evolutionary superiority, the squid, the tapeworm,
and the human embryo display qualities
that could earn each one of them the distinction
of supreme perfection. Using mechanisms of the
logical converse and by constantly addressing
the characteristics of animal life, the philosopher
questions a series of humanist conditions that
have characterized Western thinking throughout
much of its history.
In his book Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, Flusser uses the squid as an allegory of a possible human future altered by technology. Biology is transformed into a philosophical instrument, “because it provides us with an almost mythical model of life’s unrealized possibilities” (Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, 2012, p. 73). The animal thus appears as a figuration of future and technological (posthuman) possibilities as well as an otherness that demands our respect and admiration. In this sense, one could say that Flusser was working on questions that only became part of the general repertoire of theory in the late 1990s: posthumanism and animal studies.
Original article by Erick Felinto in Flusseriana