Pure War (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents) by Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer

In this dazzling dialogue with Sylvere Lotringer, Paul Virilio for the first time displayed the whole range of his reflections on the effect of speed on our civilization—every one of which has been dramatically confirmed over the years since this book's publication.

"Pure war" is the name of the invisible war that technology is waging against humanity. In this dazzling dialogue with Sylvere Lotringer, Paul Virilio for the first time displayed the whole range of his reflections on the effect of speed on our civilization and every one of them has been dramatically confirmed over the years. For Virilio, the foremost philosopher of speed, the "technical surprise" of World War I was the discovery that the wartime economy could not be sustained unless it was continued in peacetime. As a consequence, the distinction between war and peace ceased to apply, inaugurating the military-industrial complex and the militarization of science itself.

Every new invention casts a long shadow that we are generally unwilling to acknowledge in the name of progress: the invention of automobiles inaugurated car crashes; the invention of nuclear energy, Hiroshima and Tchernobyl. The technologies of instant communications have invented another kind of accident: the extermination of space and the derealization of time. Instant feedback is shrinking the planet to nothing, and "globalization" is its ultimate accident. First published in 1983, this book introduced Virilio's thinking to the United States. For successive generations of readers, it remains one of the most influential and far-reaching essays of our time.

Translated by Mark Polizzotti and Brian O'Keeffe

192 pp., 5 x 7 in,
Paperback
Published: October 1, 1998
Publisher: Semiotext(e)

Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents
Established in 1983, this series of subversive French cultural theory infiltrated American shores and an unsuspecting academe, originally in the form of their now-iconic little black pocket-sized books. This was the series that helped introduce into English such characters as Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Paul Virilio, Michel Foucault, and most famously in the Semiotext(e) lineage, Jean Baudrillard. With more recent introductions of such names as the Italian Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Paolo Virno, and the German Peter Sloterdijk, this series is now, for all intents and purposes, Semiotext(e)’s “Theory” series.