Vampyroteuthis Infernalis by Louis Bec

Vampyroteuthis Infernalis by Louis Bec

Science is interesting precisely because it relates to me. It is a human function just as much as breathing is: it is an existential interest. And an entirely objective science would be uninteresting, inhuman. The search for scientific objectivity is revealing itself in its continual advancement not as a search for purity, but as pernicious madness. The present essay demands that we give up the ideal of objectivity in favour of other intersubjective scientific methods. ---- De te fabula narratur. Thus starts this paranaturalist treatise by Vilem Flusser. Author of the seminal Towards a Philosophy of Photography (1984) and Ins Universum der Technischen Bilder (1985), Flusser introduces us here to an infernal creature from the oceanic abysses, our long lost relative, who slowly emerges, not from the oceans, but from our own depths to gaze spitefully into our eyes and reflect back at us our own existence. ---- Originally published only in German in 1987, this version has been edited and translated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes, Ph.D. candidate at the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Siegfried Zielinski, from the original, unpublished and extended Brazilian-Portuguese version of the manuscript recently found at the Vilem Flusser Archive at the Universitat der Kunst, Berlin. This edition is also accompanied by a selection of previously unpublished excerpts from Flusser's correspondence with Milton Vargas and Dora Ferreira da Silva, with whom he discussed the development of the present text.

"A classic available in English at last, this collaboration between Vilém Flusser and Louis Bec is a pioneering exploration of uncharted territory in the realm of animal cognition, philosophy and artAt once inquisitive and whimsical, this unclassifiable book brings together some of the best work of two cutting-edge thinkers that were not only geographic but also intellectual neighbors." —Eduardo Kac

"Vampryoteuthis Infernalis is a unique work that is at once literary and philosophical, poetic and scientific, and it nicely combines the imaginative fancy of the beast fable with elements of science fiction and horror. Flusser’s work is a hybrid creature, a marvelous and monstrous text that mirrors the fantastical creature it describes. The Vampyroteuthis holds a wonderfully strange and unhuman mirror up to the human and in so doing opens the way for a strange and novel non-philosophy of life." —Eugene Thacker, author of After Life

VilÉm Flusser (1920–1991) was born in Prague; emigrated to Brazil, where he taught philosophy and wrote a daily newspaper column; and later moved to France. Among his many books that have been translated into English are Does Writing Have a Future?, Into the Universe of Technical Images, and Writings, all from Minnesota.

Louis Bec is an artist who lives and works in Sorgues, France. He is the founder of the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste. 

Valentine A. Pakis is adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780816678228
ISBN 10	0816678227
Title	Vampyroteuthis Infernalis
Author	Louis Bec
Series	Posthumanities
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University of Minnesota Press
Year published	2012-09-06
Number of pages	112
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.