Pure War by Paul Virilio

Pure War Reviews

• 
  Aung Sett Kyaw Min

  In this collection of interviews conducted in 1983 Virilio supplies us with a kaleidoscopic glimpse of his thoughts on the relation between speed and perception, speed and war and speed and time, speed and economy.
  Virilio won't dwell on the same topic for more than 2 paragraphs, so there's certainly an aspect of lightning assault on our intellection machine.
  Sometimes it works, often it doesn't, leaving the reader dazzled and aphyxiated.
  However, the introduction and the two postscripts are comparatively more focused and therefore provide a neat contrast to the rest of the book.
  With the advent of technoscience, war has shifted from an evental confrontation to an infinite preparation (logistics), an infinite deployment of resources at the steady impoverishment of civil society.
  "War is politics pursued by other means" proclaims Carl von Clausewitz.
  Pure War is incarnation of war in logistics and deterrence, purportedly a justification for a steady accumulation of nuclear armaments.
  But if the logic of deterrence assumes a certain humanity of the other, what happens when the enemy is no longer a great power but a network of terrorist cells?
  The spectacle of terrorism (9/11) demonstrates that technological instantaneity has made possible the synchronization of everyone's affects in real time, to the detriment of real space.
  What happens when politics gives way to transpolitics, the mutual implosion of all categories (Baudrillard).
  In short, we're transitioning from the city of space (geopolitics) to the city of time (chronopolitics); we no longer dwell in space but in time.
  What happens when the military class turns against its own civilians in the project of endo colonization?
  In waging an assymetrical war against terrorists, the state itself comes to assume an increasingly terrorist character.
  Ultimately, the metropolis has become the new battleground in this era of transpolitical war, the Impure War. Pure War can still happen, of course, but it is increasingly fading into strategic irrelevance.
• 
  Will

  I don't understand how a book can be so right, yet so wrong at the same time. If anything's for sure, Virilio is not afraid to break out of the limiting confines of mainstream intellectual discourse.
  
  For Virilio and Lotringer's commentary on the importance of speed (an absolutely brilliant reformulation of speed as a producer of power), the underdevelopment of civil society and the civil economy by the "necessities" of military production (a different and better understanding of the military industrial complex), the automation and acceleration of war (how split second decisions made by computers could kill us all), how peace is waged, and his conception of state terrorism (the "fracturation" of war), this accessible work is undoubtedly important.
• 
  Rhys

  There is always a peripheral notion in Virilio that captures the imagination. The idea, for example, that preparing for war is Pure War, where civil life is subsumed by the logistics of war. Or the concept of endo-colonialism where imperial nations begin to colonize their own citizens.
  
  Or this: "Before, you had to leave in order to arrive. Now things arrive before anyone's leaving. We can wonder what we will wait for when we no longer need to wait in order to arrive. The answer: we'll wait for the coming of what remains" (p.82). Whatever that means ... but it does capture the imagination.
• 
  Emily Laurent-Monaghan

  This is my second engagement with Virilio (previously War and Cinema), and I am captured by the mood of his writing. He understands his role as philosopher as critical, insofar that it is akin to the role of the art critic. He is interested in formal critiques: apparatuses, models, and their formal qualities ("accidents"). The powers of adjudication that the object has and so on. I found this very interesting in his previous text as well. A very creative thinker, who, like Deleuze is also very prescient in many of his conjectures. Despite the technological apriori and the disappearance of the political or "politics," as we have understood it...there are affirmative notions within this text, and possibilities. It seems all that we have is the possibility of x.
• 
  Stavros Taktikos

  A real masterpiece, a must read if you are interested in the way war and society are in love in our days
• 
  Leon Sandler

  It's my conviction that Paul Virilio is the most important theorist writing today. His work is full of clear insights on subjects that are both exigent and morally vital. This 1983 interview (presented in an updated 2007 edition) presents virtually all of the major concepts in Virilio's work: speed, acceleration, violence, globalization, colonization, Total War, and the disappearance of reality. This text is absolutely crucial for anyone interested in understanding the contemporary global situation.
• 
  Darren

  yes, there are prophets, but which ones are they? This guy? Maybe, let's find out.
• 
  Levent

  Nice lessons