Status Updates From The Paul Virilio Reader (Eu...

What a nasty and aggravating chapter The Aesthetics of Disappearance is. It has the lack of congruency of Lyotard without his stroke of brilliance. It’s just a soup of references, but I’m not sure Virilio is meant to be affective (which is just as well because the only affect is frustration).

First few chapters are crap and way too architecturally focussed for my taste. Once Virilio finds the thread of war and speed etc the book regains its interest.

For if, in the European war of movement (the specific form of domination of space by speed which henceforth characterizes inter-State conflicts), mass is still the major component of the machine of attack, the military proletarian nonetheless seems more and more a demanding and fragile transmission, a hazardous relay station which, for the war enter-preneur, poses the problem of its deterioration.