The acceleration.

Speed, culture, and communication in the

contemporary urban spaces.

Joaquín Esteban Ortega (Ed.)

General Presentation

It is becoming very clear that staying in the economic realm to analyze the dynamism of
The critical time we live in ends up being something irreparably partial. We need to investigate and put
it evidences the silenced voids of the system and its mechanisms of structuring and reproduction.

We know that industrialization has converted to modernity and the inherent change within it.
implicit in a new reconsideration of time and space and, therefore, of culture and the way of
understand life as a whole. But perhaps we have not yet thought enough about the consequences of that
time of inertia. Unlike fluidity, which preserves its material and corporeal component, velocity
it has a conceptual and abstract component that permeates all layers of social dynamics and of itself
collective imaginary of the contemporary world. Speed has to do with the dematerialization of the
speeches and the practices of life in society in urban contexts. The territory has lost significance
in benefit of the journey, of the rocket, of the airplane, of the car, etc. The non-places actually arise, between
other things, as a consequence of the technological and instrumental purification of the project. They are the spaces

in which the instantaneous, the always absolutely new, the ephemeral, the mere link dominates; we talk about
the frantic conversion of spaces over time and the consequent contamination of the habitat.
the consequence of this is precisely the culture of impact, orthogonality, the spectacularization of
accident, both of the technological, mechanical bodies, without extension, incorporated into the utensils of
displacement, like the very dynamics of personal relationships, fluid, pure, impacted,
because they are no longer supported in habitable contexts.

The multiple prostheses to which the human condition is subjected in response to its urgencies.
compensatory measures are specified in the technology that today underpins mobility. Speed,
which in itself is not a phenomenon but a relationship, is fundamentally a hermeneutic strategy
especially subtle and interested. It is a means to interpret and manage the world that requires
an urgent reconsideration. Acceleration has become a way of life, but progressively
also in a control mode unprecedented until today and rooted in all areas of the social structure and
cultural. By extension, it could be said that it is the hidden and faint way in which they manifest.
the diverse structures of power. To such an extent has speed and its imbalances been sacralized
What we could say is that the divine attributes of ubiquity, instantaneity, and immediacy, with which
One can speak of vision and total power, which are found housed in the acceleration in the secularized tempo. This
it implies, therefore, that speed, a symptomatic expression of technique, is the consummation of metaphysics and,
by extension, that speed is another manifestation of the unfolding of reality. We find ourselves,
In this way, well identified in the era of simulation, fiction, and its seductions.

The present debate cycle aims to reflect on the implications of these issues from
various perspectives: communication, philosophy, anthropology, social psychology, urban planning,
urban geography, the art. Undoubtedly, among others, the work and critical thought of Paul Virilio can
becomes an impulse and guiding thread possible for the work that can be carried out by the participants
in the different sessions.
 Presentation

Paul Virilio

After the ACCELERATION OF HISTORY in the 20th century, caused by the Progress of the
different Transportation and Transmission Machines; in the 21st century it is put back into practice THE
ACCELERATION OF THE REAL; the situation of Panic that I have already discussed on other occasions:

THE DROMOSPHERE

In fact, this is to the History of Humanity what the discovery of the EXPANSION OF
UNIVERSE was for the cosmogony: the 'Big Bang' and the 'Big Crunch' that radically disrupt the apparent
stability of the astronomical system of another time.

In this way, after the ENLIGHTENMENT, which was the worship of the light of origins, emerges in the
current news INSTANTANISM; a greater cult to the Speed of the waves, which demands an intelligence of the
New temporality and demand one: POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SPEED that complements the
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE WEALTH of Nations of that Instant Globalization.

And the blame for everything falls on the CHAOS brought about by the NANOCATALOGIES of a technology

imperceptible and totally invisible.

After 2007, the SYSTEMIC crisis of the finances of the Single Market of 'TURBOCAPITALISM'
It illustrates the enormous risk of a defeat of the History of Mentalities: the accident of Progress.

La Rochelle, 03/27/2010
 Communication, acceleration, and reality

Germán Llorca Abad.

1. Introduction

Immediacy has become one of the fantasies of much of humanity.

the incorporation of technology into all areas of life filters our perception of things and us
forces one to give up any possibility of direct, immediate contact with what the classics
they named it real. In the apparent impossibility of recovering that contact, a question arises
urgent: is it possible to know?

Technological advancements, especially those that have occurred in the field of communication,
they have introduced a new (in)sensitivity on the horizon of people. These transformations can
to suppose the advent of new totalitarian forms of control over societies. The dictatorships of the century
XXI could be based on the administration of speed in an absolute (audio)visual regime.

Few authors have addressed the debate on these issues like the French thinker and critic of the
technology Paul Virilio. Broadly speaking, we believe we can assert that the Virilian theory is the questioning of
of reality, of the notion of reality. This statement is based on the fact that Virilio questions the
perceptual mechanisms through which we construct this reality.

Carrying out this analysis requires an approach to the historical periods in which it
they develop, from a scientific and philosophical point of view, the concepts of truth, reality, and knowledge.
In this sense, Modernity is that diffuse historical process in which the notions of
time and space and modern notions of knowledge, truth, and reality.
 The 20th century was a decisive century for the understanding of what we call modern notions.
of knowledge, truth, reality, time and space. The 20th century marked the culmination in some
crucial aspects of modern mood. Virilio actively participates in this debate and the debate
postmodern and theorizes from a very singular approach about the crisis of definitions and, in
ultimate instance, of the crisis of a reality that suffers the consequences of acceleration.

Propaganda, associated with coercive power, globalization in progress, associated with power
economic and the management of politics, associated with the first two, combine in the administration of
those totalitarian regimes we have suggested. In this article we will try to reveal some
more keys, exploring the limits of these statements. We hope to be able to bring order to these ideas and
draw some conclusions from the thought of Paul Virilio.

2. Knowledge and truth

The development of modern notions of knowledge and truth is linked to development

conceptual of the notions of space and time. These concepts have had a prominent presence in
the history of Philosophy and Science. In antiquity, time and space had remained
separated (Mínguez: 1983, 34) and were conceived as a kind of containers of human activity.
Only when it is understood that there are things in the world that can be known (Sagan, 1984: 16), does one

They developed the philosophy and science linked to the joint reflection of both dimensions.

These facts signified the establishment, albeit rudimentary, of a procedure for the
knowledge. If things could be known, a systematic method should be applied for clarification.
of the truth, of the background of the real. This was done by attempting to delimit, from the beginning, the problems.
concrete elements on which this knowledge was based (Weber, 2001: 104). This idea, still very fragile at that time,

of the possibility of apprehending the spacetime dimensions, develops in a process that lasts
centuries. Authors like Vatmo affirm that this process will culminate in the historical period known
like Modernity, it begins in the Renaissance and some of its concepts in classical Greece and Rome
(1998: 74).
 What interests us about the process, from a current perspective, is its culmination, the final phase.
the progressive development of science and philosophy established a clear definition of what space was
the time, on which a procedure for knowledge construction was formulated. We will leave for another
moment the debate about whether that definition was erroneous or not and we will limit ourselves to pointing out that it served

to build the modern ideal of knowledge. A knowledge different from that of antiquity and that of intermediate periods.

The enunciation of physical laws and the construction of a scientific method seemed to condition, in fact
conditioned, the way in which reality was conceived in all its orders (Kuhn, 2000: 129).

Over time, however, practice has shown that it is extraordinarily difficult to achieve a
effective combination between the rigidity of action and the flexibility of thought (Russell, 2004: 159). The century
XIX was a witness to a sort of culmination of the experiment of this, ultimately, artifice (Barcelona, 1999: 96
y sigs.).

Meanwhile, everything was happening at once in a slow process. The values of modernity seemed
concretize in industrial societies and other identifiable processes in a century marked by the
prevalence of the European nation-states: the transportation revolution, the scientific revolution, the
telecommunications revolution, etc. But the modern euphoria (Marín and Tresserras, 1994: 83), that
It invited to dream of great breaks and audacities but ended up being engulfed by its self-destructive nature.
The ideals of modernity would end, symbolically and forcefully, with Auschwitz, Hiroshima and
Nagasaki (Marcuse, 2001: 276).

3. The possibility of knowing fades away

Modernity was beginning to show signs of exhaustion long before the Second World War.
World. The modern ideal of knowledge, essential in understanding the modern spirit, had
begun to be replaced by a crisis of the main values of that modernity and by the
progressive implantation of a kind of insipidity or lack of depth (Jameson, 1995: 29). The solids
referents that allow to define knowledge and truth were fading away.
 As the derealization of modern ideals progresses, the real, the physical reality founded on
the modern parameters of time and space are replaced by a mediated, flat reality,
built on two dimensions (Jameson, 1995: 64 and following). In this sense, it ends up becoming a
mediated, interfered object: bodies are stripped of their spacetime coordinates and, in the
practice, they become powerless for distance. This fact has a decisive importance, since
that is to acknowledge the inability to reach knowledge of the real. It is to recognize, ultimately,
inability to continue building knowledge as a general aspiration.

This situation lays the groundwork for the postmodern debate (Lyotard, 2004), in which the
terms in which knowledge is legitimized. A knowledge, simultaneously, more commercialized and fragmented
to the point of making us distrust the existence, the possibility, of a global or total knowledge.

The consequences that interest us most from this process are observable in the maneuvers.
propagandists of power, within globalization, about culture and society. The 20th century has been
testgo of the development of propaganda to unsuspected levels. And it continues today. The development
The intensification of mass media seems to have decisively conditioned this.
statement (Reyzábal, 1999: 82). These, ultimately, are the mediating elements that stand between
us and knowledge. This situation is exacerbated by the development of the Information Society and with the
application and massive use of digital technologies applied to communication.

In the last century and a half, the communication industry has become inextricably linked to power in
all its forms and appearances. In this regard, modern propaganda is a cunning combination of
half-truths, value judgments, and a variety of exaggerations and distortions of reality (Yehya,
2003: 36).

Confronted with this situation, the imperative need, imposed, for economic efficiency
confuses with politics and society in a global dimension unknown until now. This
element is key to understanding the development of events in the second half of the 20th century in the heat of
postmodern debate, in the face of the undeniable force of facts. The phenomenon of globalization, in
its broadest definition, cultural, economic, social, etc., is the context in which to situate the debates about
the propaganda and the cultural and social changes. To some extent, the debate on postmodernity has
has been reformed in discussions about globalization, losing its prominence to become
a dimension within the debate.

Some authors claim that globalization does not necessarily entail the end of politics or of the
culture, but the need to start over (Beck, 2002: 181) when everything becomes confused again. Others
authors, (Hardt and Negri, 2004) have defined this new democratic world, in crisis and immersed in a
deep process of transformation, like the time of protest against poverty and war. Only the
critique of the forms of representation and the prefabricated images of the real would allow for a reconnection
with the path of distancing and knowledge. This approach would not imply a return to all the
values of Modernity, but to the clarification and definition of new references in a state of
hypermodernity or overmodernity.

4. The facts are subject to speed

Paul Virilio is not alien to the debates generated around these events. In fact,
he bases his entire critical theory on the fact that, like other authors, he conducts a profound review of the
modern concepts of space and time, dedicating all their efforts to analyzing the crisis of reality. In
this sentence concludes with the definition of a certain idea of speed. This phenomenon, the product of the
Modernity subjects the relationships between people and their social, cultural, natural, etc. environment. In theory
Viriliana, speed is imposed from different areas and it is the main cause of transformation.
in the mode of production of definitions. Thus it states, "The question raised is no longer so much the

modernity and 'postmodernity', but that of the present and 'post-present', in a system of
technological temporality in which the long-lasting material support is no longer predominant but rather the persistence support

"retinanas and auditvas" (Virilio, 1998b: 15).

The French thinker thus develops his obsession with questioning and contemplating the dimensions.

Spatiotemporal. They originate from the destruction of Nantes by Allied aviation in 1943.
Around 8,000 buildings were destroyed in a single day. At that time, Viriliotene was only eleven.
years. From that moment on, he claims that he never trusted his eyes again due to their fragility.
references that constitute/constituted the human perspective of the world (Virilio, 1993a: 15). For this
Motvo is deeply interested in the theory of the Phenomenology of Perception by Merleau-Ponty, which
it serves to build a crossroads with Gestalt theory and the Berlin School.
 In this regard, his early works are a profound reflection on the purpose of the
architectural constructions and a reflection on the influence of the ways of building on the
society. In other words, a review of modern urban planning. In the 1950s and 60s, Europe had been
completely reconstructed, in a literal sense and in a figurative sense. Virilio intuits that the new
generations of Europeans had, by force, to be conditioned by a new way of perceiving the
reality.

This is where it establishes the first connections between war, totalitarian powers, the
propaganda and the influence of these on people, culture, and social organization. In its early
researches carry out an exhaustive photographic cataloging of the bunkers (Virilio, 1991) that
the Germans had built during the war on the Atlantic facade of France. This effort allows him to
to note that World War II is, among many other things, the showcase where one observes the
most negative consequences of successive technological revolutions; in transportation, in the
telecommunications, in biotechnology, etc. and that had been carried out during the stage that
we defined as Modernity. These would have modified the perception of time and space and this fact
it would have determined a change in the perception of reality and would have had terrible consequences for the
knowledge (Virilio, 1984: 194 et seq.).

Virilio soon realizes that one cannot interfere in space without taking power, which leads him
it leads to the development of his theory on time, speed, and dromology. Likewise, he realizes the
weakening of the physical order built on modern notions of space and time. For all these
Motvos proposes that politics be thought of more in terms of chrono-politics than in terms of
traditional geopolitics (Virilio and Lotringer, 2003).

5. Space and time are subjected to speed.

The spatiotemporal problem described by Virilio materializes in the space of cities.

modern. The aesthetic place takes on special relevance in his theories. A good proof of its value lies
it was there that the Philosopher was born (Virilio, 1997). The city is not a simple ordered space where
acontece la vida. La ciudad moderna es el primer lugar de aceleración, donde los acontecimientos y la
human perceptions rush. Geographic and temporal boundaries are constrained within it. The separation
forced immediate contact with the environment, that is, with raw reality, is what fosters the
progressive separation of the individual from the knowledge of the truth. The annihilation of the
consciousness through the sensory annihilation of life.

The 20th century has been a mediated century that has deprived men and women of their rights.
immediate. The mediation devices between human consciousness and reality are devices of
suppression of rights (Virilio, 1993b: 19 et seq.). In turn, the modern city is the place where converge
the new ways of waging war and where the new methodologies of propaganda are put into practice
of social control.

Paul Virilio reconstructs, from this perspective, the necessary complementarity between weapons and the
speed: the weapon invents speed, or the discovery of speed invents the weapon. The new
war machines release a specific velocity vector, to the point that it needs a name
special, since they not only signify power of destruction. 'Dromocracy' is the administration of
space and time through war. Military intelligence is forced to eliminate the notion of time.
of peace/war, in favor of a single dimension: permanent war. It should be remembered that after the Second
World War, distance and time never again meant security, as the power of
the annihilation of humanity takes on a monstrous scale in the second half of the 20th century (Virilio,
1978: 58).

In this way, by eliminating borders, total war abolished the protective strips of the
national realities. In total war or total peace, the system extends and reproduces in a process.
material without objective, but never again without limits.

Day and night become equivalent, and the flow of time loses its former importance.
People are gradually losing their natural ability to perceive, due to devices
technological mediation. Virilio dedicates many pages to explain the issue. According to the author, natural in the being
Human is what determines its physical limitations in terms of walking or running, seeing, listening, and perceiving.
these capabilities are joined by the psychological construction of the individual, based on a linguistic capacity
cognitive apprehension of reality.

This idea is undoubtedly controversial and debatable, but also fundamental when it comes to understanding its

propositions. For Virilio, the ability to speak is, among other reasons, essential in the development of
knowledge and the idea of reality. Although he defines it as 'the best and the worst of things' (Virilio, 1999:
121), the author wishes to recover language and its reconstructive capacity. Likewise, in the critique of the

modern cities suggest that urban architecture, vertical and ruthless, favors disconnection
between people and a kind of mental alienation (Virilio and Lotringer, 2003: 14).
 The natural rhythms of interaction with the world have been replaced by a false light and everything is
finds itself circulating at high speed in a false day, where neither the present, nor the past nor the
future, where everything is here and now. First it would be the light of the streetlights and today it is the artificial light projected by

telecommunication devices: "Today, struggles move from the written word to the screen, from orality to
visibility" (Virilio, 1998a: 15).

6. In summary

Speed is the phenomenon produced by the means of mediation between reality and the
people. The use of metabolic and mechanical prosthetics has favored the absolute mastery of speed,
since it changes the perception of spacetime dimensions. The relative speeds of the ship,
the train, or the car gave way to the absolute speed of light.

The absolute speed of light immobilizes people in real physical space: they no longer need it.
to move, since the mediated, distorted, broken, discontinuous, accelerated reality enters the home to
through the television screen or, as Virilio has defined it, through the last horizon of visibility
(1995: 51). A horizon, which in its most current versions is that of the computer screen, that of the phone
mobile, that of the mp4 player, that of the console, etc. Thus, it is understood that the loss of distances
it confronts man with the ridiculousness of his own dimensions and forces him to despise his own body
physical.

This fact has great explanatory importance for the notions of propaganda and globalization.
propaganda is no longer about constructing a biased message nor about more or less popular support
weighted to an idea. Propaganda is the unconscious and reflexive acceptance of assumptions.
taxes by a higher hierarchical order. A hierarchical order that uses the propagandistic technique of the
complete substitution of reality and the establishment of a totalitarian vision regime (Virilio, 1978: 62).

On one hand, the medium of communication is for Virilio a kind of absolute synthesizer of the
reality, which substitutes direct experience with the world. In this sense, manipulation reaches a
much deeper level than simple manipulation through language. On the other hand, these
phenomena progressively achieve a global implantation. Virilio asserts that globalization is a
farce: "the only thing that is being effectively globalized is time." Now everything happens in the
perspective of real time, of immediacy: "from now on we are designed to live in a
unique time system” (Virilio, 2003: 115 et seq.).
 Globalization and the virtualization of human relationships suggest a kind of time.
universal that will become a new form of detranía. The politics is from this moment on.
Chronopolitics, that is, the administration of a tyrannical temporal regime where the modern coordinates
of space and time no longer have their former importance. Here, the separation that defined the relationship of the

ancient nation-states cease to be important. Territorial contiguity is replaced by a

audiovisual continuity, which shifts political boundaries towards the exercise of globalist policies. By
Finally, the architectural device contributes to perpetuating and promoting this situation, as it
imposed verticality by architecture hinders human communication and, consequently, the
capacity to reason. Culture has become something exclusively visual, based on the circulation of
images.

7. In conclusion

It is complicated to condense the theoretical essences of one of the densest and most cryptic thinkers.
from the 20th century. That is why we hope that the present text has been sufficiently clear.
Probably, the main virtue of Virilio's work is its immense capacity to suggest new
meanings. In other words, the ability of their texts to propose new paths for the
knowledge. We understand that this remains one of the best descriptions of his essayistic work, or,
at least, the one that can provide the most satisfaction. We understand, in turn, that it is one of the reasons
what justifies today the complete validity of their ideas.

The defense of modern ideas of space and time brings us, in a concrete way, to the defense
of modern ideals. However, we should not overlook that Virilio is an author who harshly criticizes the
delays and more negative consequences of modernity, especially those who have a critique of
the communication technologies. This fact clearly brings it closer to postmodern criticism.
We understand that Virilio's works are a reflection of the particular mix between a strong influence of
personal experiences, an unorthodox academic background, and a foundational Christian conception of the
existence. These facts have not spared him from criticism, and they are, at times, used in his
against.

Speed constitutes the main problem of the latest modern societies. Due to not being able to
accessing the real, our judgment is at the mercy of those who manage time; which is now that of the
media and communication technologies. Is it possible to know? Is it possible to access reality? Can it be
invert the process? [...]
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