Technical ambivalence and the end of history

Abstract

The examples of Walter Benjamin and Vilém Flusser allow us to tell the difficult history of the 20^thcentury, although in two different parts. Benjamin denounces the ambivalence of modern history that revealed us that the cultural process it produced also led to barbarism, and it did so through the technique of which the astonishment would be the concentration camps – rationally planned and carried out. This acknowledgment would imply abandoning the ideology of automatic progress of humanity and the future that comes with it. Benjamin also pointed out the importance of “brushing history against the grain” to uncover revealing fragments of the past. Flusser, who arrived in Brazil in 1940, the same year that Benjamin committed suicide in Europe, is one step ahead in this challenge. For him, it is no longer possible to operate in the historical culture as the modern conception of history proved unsustainable. By analyzing technological devices, he could diagnose a post-history, in which writing gives space to images. For him, the second half of the 20^thcentury needs to respond to a world filled with technical images, which could only be done through a fragmented and performative thought – what, in a way, meets the essayism of Walter Benjamin.