Paul Virilio Quotes on Politics
Paul Virilio’s Speed and Politics (Vitesse et politique, 1977) and the long sequence of works on dromology, the integral accident, and the militarization of perception gave late twentieth-century French political philosophy one of its most distinctive analyses of the technological conditions of contemporary political life. The central thesis is that speed (vitesse) is the constitutive political variable of modernity — military, communicational, financial, and informational acceleration progressively displace the spatial and temporal frames within which the older traditions of political philosophy had operated, with the resulting tendency toward generalized real-time computation and the integral accidents of accelerated systems framing the proper objects of contemporary political analysis. The framework, drawing on Virilio’s Catholic phenomenological background and the deep engagement with military strategy and architecture, shaped contemporary continental political theory and the philosophical engagement with technology, war, and the politics of speed.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Paul Virilio:
“Speed is the hope of the West.”
-
Attributed to Paul Virilio:
“Politics is no longer in space; it is in time.”
-
“The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies. Thus, in the very near future, and I stress this important point, it will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.”
From Ctheory Interview With Paul Virilio 'The Kosovo War Took Place In Orbital Space: Paul Virilio in Conversation with John Armitage -
“From Ctheory Interview With Paul Virilio 'The Kosovo War Took Place In Orbital Space: Paul Virilio in Conversation with John Armitage”
The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies. Thus, in the very near future, and I stress this important point, it will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be w -
“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution... Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.”
Politics of the Very Worst , New York: Semiotext(e), 1999, p. 89 -
“Pure War . New York, NY, U.S.A.: Semiotext(e), 1983. p. 18”
All of us are already civilian soldiers, without knowing it…The great stroke of luck for the military class’s terrorism is that no one recognizes it. People don’t recognize the militarized part of their identity, of their consciousness. -
“Pure War . New York, NY, U.S.A.: Semiotext(e), 1983. p. 30”
Wealth is the hidden side of speed and speed the hidden side of wealth.