Fiction in contemporary cultural theory and science

ESSCS Winter Seminar 2017

Rio de Janeiro, Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-Rio)

November 8 – 10 2017

At least since the publication, in 1911, of Die Philosophie des Als

Ob (The Philosophy of 'As if'), by Hans Vaihinger, the role of fiction in
philosophy and in theoretical thinking has been discussed intensely.
Vaihinger argued that fiction is necessary in science because we can
never fully know the underlying reality and must therefore construct
systems and models of thought “as if” reality matches our models.
Vaihinger’s Fictionalism suggested that concepts like Newton’s “force
of gravity”, Freud’s “unconscious” and Marx’ “social class” would all
be considered phenomena that we suppose to exist without ever
being able to observe them directly. For the Czech born philosopher
Vilém Flusser, fiction is thus a necessary tool in the effort of grasping
truth through theoretical hypothesis. For Flusser we need to reinvent
the world through fiction to be able to think it, “fiction is reality", he
claims hence provoking a clash between ontology and
phenomenology. In the essay, Vampiroteuthis Infernalis, written
together with the French biologist and artist Louis Bec, and published
in German in 1987, the authors create a philosophical fiction, a sort
of “fabulatory epistemology”, that permits them to contemplate
humanity, our own existential structure, from the most distant of
viewpoints, a non-human perspective of what Ian Bogost would call
an “Alien Phenomenology”. For Flusser this kind of theoretical
experiment were disclosing the role of fiction in scientific thinking
and discourse, not in the way of traditional “Science Fiction” where
science is converted into phantasies and nightmares but as a
“fictional science” aiming beyond scientific objectivity and serving
the extension of human knowledge. For the last decades, Flusser has
been studied as an original contributor to new media theory but
recent studies of his extensive archives have disclosed a very rich
and original contribution to contemporary thinking on material
culture and the non-human. In Brazil, recent discussions has i.e.
brought Flusser´s radical epistemology in dialogue with the Brazilian
anthropologist, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro´s ideas on a pre-
Columbian perspectivism in the Amerindian cosmology that works on
the ground of a spiritual ontology and is claimed to represent a
reversal of the classical Western dualities of nature and culture,
object and subject, non-human and human.

Biography
BOGOST, Ian. Alien phenomenology: or what it is like to be a thing. Minneapolis,
University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, Eduardo. Cannibal Metaphysics. Univocal Publishing;
2014.
FELINTO, Erick; SANTAELLA, Lucia. O explorador de abismos: Flusser e o pó s-
humanismo. Sã o Paulo: Editora Paulus, 2012.
FLUSSER, Vilém & Louis Bec. Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report
by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste. (Valentine A.
Pakis Translator) (Posthumanities), 2012
HAYLES, N.K. “Speculative Aesthetics and Object-Oriented Inquiry (OOI).” Em
Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism, v. 5, 2014.
SZENDY, Peter. Kant Chez Les Extraterrestres: Philosofictions Cosmopolitiques.
Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 2011.

Deadline for proposals is October 2nd. Please send a title with a 300 words
abstract and a short description of institutional affiliation directly
to karlerikschollhammer@me.com