Janine Armin : Conflict of Interest

Review of Paul Virilio and Sylvère Lotringer, Pure War (Semiotexte), at Bookforum (June/July/Aug) :

In the book’s new interview, Virilio determines that globalization is the ultimate accident, an idea he hit on in 1982: “The tendency is for each place to become rigorously equivalent,” which in turn leads to a convergence of cities, a global village. If time no longer defines territory, movement ceases to be necessary. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the stagnant destitution pervading the shantytowns surrounding airports in such cities as Mumbai and Cape Town, showing “our inability to set up a true vectorial politics—something like a democratic speed.”

Virilio’s theories about speed are also informed by architectural comparisons, which surface in his critique of society’s dismissal of proportion, as exemplified by American obesity, which he terms “the globalization of the body proper.” This distancing from nature’s balance has opened the door to the disequilibrium of terrorism. Lotringer observes that terrorists are “merely speeding up a mutation that is already underway” and that “attacking one [city] automatically threatens them all.” This shift in scale has made the city the battlefield and in turn causes “states [to] act like individual terrorists.” Israel’s bombing of the Beirut airport in 1968 and the lack of a declaration of war in the Falklands conflict are striking illustrations.