Paul Virilio (4 January 1932 – 10 September 2018) was a French cultural theorist, urbanist, architect and aesthetic philosopher. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military. Virilio was a prolific creator of neologisms, most notably his concept of "Dromology", the all-around, pervasive inscription of speed in every aspect of life. According to two biographers, Virilio was a "historian of warfare, technology and photography, a philosopher of architecture, military strategy and cinema, and a politically engaged provocative commentator on history, terrorism, mass media and human-machine relations."

Biography

Paul Virilio was born in Paris in 1932 to an Italian communist father and a Catholic Breton mother. After being conscripted into the army during the Algerian War, Virilio attended lectures in phenomenology by Maurice Merleau-Ponty at the Sorbonne. In 1998, Virilio began to teach intensive seminars at the European Graduate School. His final projects involved working with homeless groups in Paris and building the first Museum of the Accident.

Ideas

Virilio coined the term "dromology" (based on Dromos, an Ancient Greek noun for race or racetrack) to signify the "logic and impact of speed". Dromology is important when considering the structuring of society in relation to warfare and modern media, as the speed at which something happens may change its essential nature, and that which moves with speed quickly comes to dominate that which is slower. Hence the study of dromology "necessarily implies the study of the organisation of territory, [as whoever] controls the territory possesses it. Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation".

Reception

Jean Baudrillard, while drawing on Virilio's works in 1985, eventually stated in 1988 that Virilio's analyses were out of date as "Speed is out!", stating that immobility has set in because "all trips have already taken place". A book-length criticism of Virilio's work to 2004 was written by Steve Redhead. He observed: He also notes that Virilio does not pass the grade in academic studies: However, for Law and Popular Culture, Redhead concedes Virilio as a factor: In 2014, Mark Lacy, an analyst of security, technology and global politics noted: Lacy credits Virilio with balancing the propaganda of progress against the management of fear at some cost:

Sokal and Bricmont

Virilio was one of the many cultural theorists (and other postmodernists) criticized by physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont in 1997 for what they characterize as misunderstanding and misuse of science and mathematics. Virilio's works are the subject of chapter 10 of Fashionable Nonsense. Their criticism consists of a series of quotes (often long) from Virilio's works, and then explanations of how Virilio confuses basic physics concepts and abuses scientific terminology, to the point of absurdity. In the authors' words: A criticism of a passage often reads something like this: They end their chapter with a long quote followed by this comment: