Negative Horizon: An Essay in Dromoscopy

This book covers the key themes in Virilio's work: speed; society; virtuality; new technology."Negative Horizon" is Paul Virilio's most original and unified exploration of the key themes and ideas running through his thought. Provocative and forceful, it sets out Virilio's theory of dromoscopy: a means of apprehending speed and its pivotal - and potentially destructive - role in contemporary global society.Applying this theory to Western political and military history, Virilio exposes a compulsion to accelerate, and the rise of a politics of time - encapsulated in the importance accorded to speed - over territorial politics of space. Moving through human history from the cave paintings at Lascaux that depict the first hunters, to the 'stealth technologies' deployed in contemporary warfare, Virilio shows how resistance to speed and movement has consistently been eroded, and the physical world adapted, in order to satisfy the urge to move further and faster. In exposing what he believes to be the consequences of this constant acceleration for human sensory perception and, ultimately, global democracy, Virilio offers a vision of history and politics as disturbing as it is original.These books are seminal works of the finest minds in Western thought, including Adorno, Badiou, Derrida, Heidegger and Larkin. They are works of such power that they changed the cultural mind when they were written and continue to resonate today - landmark texts in the fields of philosophy, literature, popular culture, politics and theology - strikingly designed, accessibly priced.