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revolution

For Flusser, revolution is a political and historical category, and the Romanian Revolution of 1989 should not be called a revolution (Television Image and Political Space in the Light of the Romanian Revolution , 00:30). For revolution is only possible in a world of political consciousness. A world of History, where nothing repeats itself, a world of events and processes, of cause and effects, rationally explained. That is the world mediated by texts, which led us to conceptual thinking and politics. What happened in Romania, for Flusser, was actually one of the first examples of what we could call “post-history” (post-histoire).

Flusser uses the word revolution properly, according to him, when he talks about an Information Revolution (Television Image and Political Space in the Light of the Romanian Revolution, 16:51).

According to Flusser, as time went on, scientific and rational thought evolved so much that they became unimaginable – conceivable, yet unimaginable. Photography (technical image) was invented in order to make the events that surround us imaginable again. Photography transcends (transcodes) events into happenings (magical consciousness). However, more recently, there has been an inversion of the vector of signification. Photography no longer documents the events. Now it's the image that generates the events. Actions are taken in order to be photographed. That was what happened in the “Romanian Revolution”, according to Flusser.

In post-history, political reasoning is no longer valid. That is why Flusser states that we don't have criteria for our times. We don't have a philosophy of the technical image and of post-history.

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revolution.txt · Last modified: 2023/03/12 19:21 by steffi_winkler