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Visuality, Dromology and TimeCompression

Paul Virilios new ocularcentrism

Rob Bartram

ABSTRACT. This article presents a case for retheorizing visual

culture, by establishing conceptual links between visuality, drom-ology and time compression. More specifically, it establishes themutually constitutive relationship forged between visuality and theWestern cultural imperative to compress the transmission time delayof visualizing technologies. I argue that the Western cultural pursuitof ubiquitous and simultaneous vision not only creates a new form ofocularcentrism, but generates potentially detrimental consequencesfor human relations and diminishes human control over democraticprocesses. The article is enriched and focused by drawing upon therecent work of Paul Virilio. Virilios phenomenologically inspiredcritique of visualizing technology prompts us to rethink visuality asan active, embodied practice constituting important lived experi-ences. KEY WORDS dromology Paul Virilio time compression visuality

Introduction

In this article, I want to present a case for retheorizing visual culture, by estab-

lishing conceptual links between visuality (how vision is socially constructed),

dromology (the science of speed) and time compression. Visuality has been

described as distinct, but not opposed to the physical act of seeing, and compris-

ing of the technologies that allow us to view the world, and its discursive deter-

minations (Foster, 1988: ix). Until relatively recently, there has been a tendency

for cultural theorists to separate out visuality from social and cultural practices,

Time & Society copyright 2004 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)VOL. 13 No. 2/3 (2004), pp. 285300 0961-463X DOI: 10.1177/0961463X04044577

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and sensory and embodied experiences. In a sense, the pursuit of a new social

theory of visuality in sociology, media studies and other fields of the arts,

humanities and social science has merely reaffirmed the ocularcentric nature of

contemporary culture.1 Arguments about visuality have been broad-ranging,

although one of the most contentious debates has drawn attention to the detri-

mental impact of visualizing technologies and the way in which it reinscribes

social differences through specific modes of production and interpretation.2 One

problem that appears to have dogged such work is its predictable, if not pre-

scriptive mode of analysis: Foucaults (1977) notion of the panopticon has pro-

vided the dominant conceptual framework with most cultural theorists defining

their task as exposing power relations embedded within the field of vision.

These tendencies have compounded belief in the onto-interrogative structure of

the analysis rather than produce critically insightful, alternative commentaries

on visuality.

I want to address this theoretical problem by placing a different emphasis onthe constitution of visuality. I want to establish the mutually constitutive rela-

tionships forged between visuality and the Western cultural imperative to com-

press the transmission time delay of visualizing technologies. My emphasis on

this relationship goes against the tendency to abstract vision, and the rather (too)

precise logic of identifying power relations within scopic regimes. Instead, I

want to lend visuality a more blurry consistency, with visualizing technology

being perceived in terms of the transpearance of real and virtual vision3 and its

potential to disrupt subjectivities. This, I suggest, is an experience produced by

the imperative to create instantaneous and ubiquitous, one-time visions of theworld, through television broadcasting, virtual image technology and the now

highly prolific tele-surveillance cameras and screens that play integral parts of

our daily lives. More broadly, it is my intention to mull over the idea that con-

temporary Western culture has become hypervisible to the extent that it is not

only difficult to know what we are looking at, but where and how to look,

because cultural signs are now detached from their reference points and points

of origin (Baudrillard, 1993; 1994a, b), as well as their local time. My argu-

ments build on important work carried out by Adam (1990; 1995; 1998) and

Nowotny (1994), among others, which has demonstrated the primacy of

timescapes in the constitution of the socio-cultural world. From a similarchrono-perspective, I want to make a case for exploring visuality, by discussing

the imperative to create real time visuality that necessarily prioritizes the speed

of transmission over the social, economic or political significance of the image.

To simultaneously enrich and focus my argument, I intend to work with

various prompts and cues offered by the work of Paul Virilio. Virilio has

long argued that dromology, time compression and visualizing technology are

closely linked concepts that together have created a new ocular reality. I would

take Virilios argument further and suggest that a new ocularcentrism has

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emerged in the last ten years that has reconfigured the way in which we view

world and dramatically changed the way in which we participate in it.

The article begins by making the links between the important biographical

details in Virilios life and his sustained philosophical assault on visualizing

technologies. Following this, I outline the relationship between visualizing tech-

nology, dromology, and time compression by drawing upon Virilios published

work and interviews. In the conclusion to this work, I present some preliminary

ideas about how a chrono-perspective might profitably allow us to retheorize

visuality.

Paul Virilios Biographical and Intellectual Compass

Virilio attaches a profound sense of importance in his writing to the complicated

and sometimes traumatic events in his life. Born in France in 1932, he sufferedthe ordeal of Nazi bombing campaigns in Nantes, where he lived throughout the

Second World War. In interview, Virilio (1997a) has described himself as a war

baby and his epoch as the epoch of the Blitzkrieg (Armitage, 2000a). It is

clear that his childhood experiences of conflict and occupation have ingrained a

deep sense of social justice and a commitment to humanist and humanitarian

ideals. Virilios intellectual and philosophical background is just as compli-

cated: He trained as an artist in stained-glass work before studying philosophy at

the Sorbonne, under the tutelage of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In 1963, he became

founding President of the Architecture Principe and then later, Professor andDirector General of Architecture at the Ecole Speciale dArchitecture in Paris,

where his work with Claude Parent on bunker archaeology and the function of

the oblique first came to prominence (Parent and Virilio, 1996). After being

involved in the political activities of 1968 in Paris, he helped to found, with

Jacques Derrida and others, the College Internationale de Philosophie.

However, it was not until the late 1970s that Virilio became such a prolific

writer on philosophical and contemporary cultural issues: To date, he has pub-

lished 15 books and numerous journal articles. Although he has retired from

teaching, he still resides in Paris and works with organizations concerned with

housing and the homeless in the French capital. A combination of his charity

work and his motivation to maintain and advance human relations in all aspects

of social and cultural life still manages to inspire him to write at least one book a

year.

There has been a gradual uptake of Virilios ideas in recent years, notably by

researchers in media and cultural studies, politics and architectural studies. The

radical directness of Virilios rhetoric and the prophetic quality of his theorizing

have breathed new life into some of the moribund debates of contemporary cul-

ture and society.4 Disciplines such as geography have been a little indifferent

BARTRAM: VISUALITY, D RO MO LO GY A ND T IM E C OM PR ESSIO N 287



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Dromology and Time Compression

Today, almost all current technologies put the speed of light to work . . . we are notonly talking about information at a distance but also operation at a distance, or, thepossibility to act instantaneously, from afar . . . This means that history is now

rushing headlong into the wall of time . . . the speed of light does not merely trans-form the world. It becomes the world. (Virilio, 1999a)

Virilios treatise on dromology and time compression has acted as a kind of

conceptual lynchpin in his writing since the publication of Speed and Politics:

An Essay on Dromology (Virilio, 1986a).6 Dromology is concerned with the

acceleration of the social, political and economic world, with the obvious

implication that durations of time involved in the transference of people and

objects, and the transmission of the images and ideas, have become compressed.

Although this is often explained as an outcome of globalization and/or the

processes of capital accumulation (see for example, Harvey, 1989; Castells,1996), Virilio and other theorists such as Adam (1990; 1995; 1998) have turned

the explanation around by suggesting that dromology is the driver of change.

Indeed, because the pursuit of speed is valorized as unquestioned and unques-

tionable, it overshadows other social and environmental considerations (Adam,

2003).

Virilios seemingly chaotic stream of consciousness writing technique that

produces page after page of anecdotes and aphorisms suddenly takes on a

semblance of highly ordered narrative with a detailed, critical enquiry of the

dromological conception of society. For Virilio, dromology runs parallel to thepolitical economy of wealth because speed has been central to the organization

of civilizations and politics (Virilio, 1986a; Virilio and Lotringer, 1997). More-

over, the pursuit of wealth and power in the Western world has been closely

allied to the pursuit of greater speed (Armitage, 2000a). Thus, Virilio (1997;

2000a) has explored the speeding up of transference, transmission and imple-

mentation in the context of political movements and geopolitics, the evolution

of cities (Virilio, 1986a; 1994a; 1995b), cryogenics and nature (Virilio, 1990;

1997b), visual technology (Virilio, 1994a; 1997a; 2000b) and military strategy

(Virilio, 1986a, b; 1989; 1990; 2000a). According to Virilio, the speeding up of

society is far from emancipatory. On the contrary, the acceleration of speed has

had largely detrimental consequences with the decline of the public sphere, the

erosion of the democratic process and the increased power of the military com-

plex. For example, Virilio has argued that capital cities of the future will only

remain significant because of their ability to act as the intersection of speed,

rather than serving any communal or social purpose (Virilio and Lotringer,

1997). However, it is with reference to the military industrial complex that

Virilios arguments about dromology appear to have the greatest salience. He

has argued that a recent phenomenon of military strategy is pure war, which is




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forcing surrender of the enemy without military engagement through the control

of the infosphere, and specifically the speed of media transmission and

militaristic implementation (Virilio, 1986b). The increased speed of military

operations and the enhanced effectiveness of laser and computer-guided

weapons systems have ensured the geostrategic homogenization of the globe

because military control from a distance is now absolute (Virilio, 1986a: 135).

However, pure war is also fought by defining the context of the media debate

about the validity of warfare (Virilio, 1990). Consistent with this argument,

Virilio (1999a) has suggested that the recent Kosovo war was fought not on

the ground but in orbital space, with the military and the media becoming part of

a seamless, self-justifying dissemination process. When control of orbital space

is complete, the enemy can be easily cast and the rationale for bombing

campaigns and missile launches can be woven into media-military controlled

debate (Virilio, 2000b). Subscription to cable and satellite companies, whose

primary goal is the maintenance of live broadcast, is therefore more like a newform of conscription (Virilio, 1990).

An important extension of Virilios work on dromology has been his critique

of new technology that exists to compress time-distance so that technological

and media-related vectors can be delocalized (Virilio, 1990: 134). Following

this argument through, the compression of time-distance leads to the elimina-

tion of the worlds dimensions so that the world now faces a new form of pollu-

tion that is no longer atmospheric or hydrospheric but dromospheric (Virilio,

1997a: 64). Time distance, Virilio (1986b) argues, is vital to the maintenance of

real perspective, an argument underscored in Speed and Politics, where hesuggests that supersonic vectors have already led to the defeat of the world as a

field, as a distance, as matter (p. 133). The subtext is shallow here Virilios

primary concern is the manner in which the social, cultural and political world

only appears to progress at the speed of weapons technology (Virilio, 1986a:

68). He appears to be motivated by establishing the links between speed and

military technology and explaining how our resulting image of time has become

one of instantaneity and ubiquity because extensive time has given way to inten-

sive time, and real time has superseded real space (Virilio, 1991b). He states:

Real time now prevails above both space and geosphere. The primacy of real time,of immediacy, over and above space and surface is a fait accompli. (Virilio,1995a)

The imperative to compress time means that here no longer exists, everything

is now (Virilio, 2000b: 116), which necessarily collapses the distinction

between the crucial and incidental aspects of our lives, and erodes the time

distance that allows human relations to exist and the processes of democratic

participation and deliberation to occur (Virilio, 1991a; 2000b; Virilio and

Lotringer, 1997). Virilio (1999b) suggests, quite persuasively, that the desire for




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absolute power in the future will not be played out through attempting to

achieve greater mobility, but through polar inertia and the mastery of time. It

is not too fanciful in Virilios (1997b) view to anticipate a widespread version

of polar inertia because every city will be the same place in time. There will

be a kind of coexistence, and probably not a very peaceful one, between these

cities which have kept their distance in space, but which will be telescoped in

time (p. 64).

It follows then that the current usage of the term globalization is inaccurate,

despite its profilic use and apparent ontological stricture in debates on the

global economy and global culture. The process of globalization has less to do

with economic or cultural homogeneity and more to do with the creation of

global time and the progression towards a one time system of the present

instant (Virilio, 1991b). This, Virilio (1997b) reminds us, will be like living in

live society that has no extension or duration and no sense of the importance of

territory or space.7There are stark implications of creating a global one time system: In the

realms of political debate for example, politics will occur increasingly through

media and information circuits, so that the time and even the possibility of

deliberation and consensus are obliterated. Human control over the democratic

process is therefore rendered more problematical (Kellner, 2000:107). The

election of Silvio Berlusconis to the Italian presidency in the mid-1990s serves

as an obvious example. Virilio (1995c) suggests that the election represents

something of a media coup. That is, Berlusconis control over the Italian

media and therefore the publicity over the Italian presidential election replaced the political reality of Left and Right wing opinion with a new alter-

native, which saw the old political dichotomy on one side and the new media

class on the other.

Virilios notions of dromology and time compression have widespread rele-

vance to the social, cultural and political world. However, I am now going to

focus on just one area of concern that relates to visuality and specifically the

implications of devising and implementing visualizing technology.

Visualizing Technologies, Endo-colonialism and the New Ocularcentrism

Over the last 20 years, Virilio has steadily forged conceptual links between

dromology, time compression and the disruption of perception by visualizing

technologies. For Virilio (1994a) this is not a benign process. Rather, it creates

for the state and new technology a condition that he describes as endo-

colonization, where urban space can be colonized through the use of vision

machines. Endo-colonialism, according to Virilio (2000b), could transform

electronic optics into the search engines of a globalized foresight. He states:




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If in the past with the telescope, it was simply a matter of observing somethingunexpected looming up over the horizon, it is now a question of seeing what ishappening at the other end of the world . . . the earth is no longer as far as the eyecan see, it presents all aspects of itself for inspection. (p. 17)

There is then, a growing confusion over what we might term ocular reality(what we can see with the naked eye) and its instantaneous, mediated represen-

tation (Virilio, 1989: 73). In fact, ocular reality has been inverted images and

digital representations have replaced the real with a spectral substitute. What we

are witnessing is societys replacement of what Virilio defines as one predeter-

mined reality by another (Armitage, 2000a), as opposed to Baudrillards

(1994a) contention that reality has vanished and that what were left with,

through scientific and technological simulation, is the hyper-real. For Virilio,

reality is constituted through an epoch, a science or a technique and that each

transition in reality has a profound consequence for social life. So, it is not that

the new visual technologies distort or destroy our sense of the world, theyreplace it. Whereas some theorists such as Robins (1996) deem this process to

be a collective response to the dissatisfaction with the real world, Virilio con-

versely makes no implication that the process is an outcome of personal or

collective will. Indeed, perhaps the most distressing aspect of Virilios argu-

ment is his belief that society remains largely unaware of the consequences of

implementing new visual technology. Locating this fundamental issue within a

broader history of visual technological advancement, he argues:

. . . alongside the well-known effects of telescopy and microscopy, which haverevolutionized our perception of the world since the 17 th century, it will not belong before the repercussions of videoscopy make themselves felt through theconstitution of an instantaneous, interactive space-time that has nothingin common with the topographical space of geographical or even geometricaldistance. (Virilio, 1999b: 58)

Virilios critique of visualizing technology challenges the logic to create

instantaneous and ubiquitous transmission. While this does not distinguish

Virilios work from that of other theorists, notably Kraus (1988), what makes

Virilios argument original is his detailed exposition of the resulting phenome-

nological experiences, and more precisely how fragmented, discontinuous andautonomous visual experience instigates a form of widespread mental con-

cussion (Virilio, 1995a). Since the experience of this real time tele-reality is

dependent on the near instantaneity achieved by the speed of electro-optics, it is

no longer necessary to make a journey, since one has already arrived. Building

on arguments outlined earlier in my explanation of dromology and time com-

pression, the immediacy and instantaneity of visualizing technology ensures

that real time prevails above both real space and geosphere, making visual tech-

nology a new form of perspective that doesnt coincide with the audio-visual




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perspective that we already know. It is a tactile perspective that places the

world within our grasp, and allows us to see, hear, feel and reach at a distance

(Virilio, 1995c). This new ocularcentrism is characterized by an endless tele-

horizon brought about by the nodal, tele-local reorganization of telecommuni-

cations.

Virilio is equally concerned about the reconstitution of visuality through

virtual reality technology. He has argued that immersion in the virtual world has

necessarily redefined the subjectivities that constitute visuality, and alters the

sense of space, time and the body because of the disappearance of territory and

specifically the geographical interval that allows human relations to exist

(Virilio and Lotringer, 1997: 114). For Virilio (2000b), virtual reality is the

amplification of the optical density of the representation of the real world an

amplification that attempts to compensate for the contraction of time and dis-

tance, and is prioritized according to the speed of transmission rather than to

social, economic or political significance (p. 14). Virtual technology simplyadds to the tele-presence of the world which submerges the immediate

presence of individuals and transforms the rationale for telecommunications

from entertainment as it was 50 years ago, to the total exposure and invasion of

our lives (p. 15).

Virilio (2000b) remains sceptical about the overbearing influence of tele-

presence not least because of the ascent to visual extremes through what he

has identified as optical shock techniques. Optical shocks do not signpost the

erasure of a moral code for Virilio, they merely confirm the decline of social

relations and the death of any living language, given the primacy of the visual.More broadly, the dominance of tele-presence and specifically the privileging

of live transmission gives us a happening, but also a passing away, so that what

emerges is the possibility of a civilization of forgetting, a live (live-coverage)

society that has no future and no past, since it has no extension and no duration,

a society intensely present here and there at once in other words, telepresent to

the whole world (Virilio, 1997b: 25).

Tele-presence is problematic in several ways: first, there is a fundamental

loss of orientation. In what Virilio (1994a) calls the logistics of perception, the

physical world disappears as new visual fields are created. Such is the loss in

faith in ocular reality, that society has become reliant on films, documentariesand computer software to construct illusionary sightlines. The belief in techno-

logically created sightlines reaffirms the pursuit of total vision a world

without dead angles, without areas of shadow (Virilio, 2000b: 1516). The line

of the sighting device has therefore substituted perception by becoming the site

and sight for all (Virilio, 1994b).

Virilio (1997b) also argues that the pernicious industrialization of vision

(p. 89) has as its main objectives the displacement of visual subjectivities and

the standardization of visual experience. For example, on the cinematic illu-




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sion, Virilio exclaims: If Kafka claimed that cinema means pulling a uniform

over your eyes, then television means pulling on a straightjacket (p. 97). Or, in

other words, the field of perception has been mobilized so that there is no choice

but to see all. Where once the spectacle of the world was limited to the rhythm

of the seasons and the alteration of night and day, the industrialization of vision

perverts the order of perception in order to create the instant event and a uniform

aesthetic.

Furthermore, Virilio (1994b) argues that vision has effectively been doubled

by new technologies: A splitting of vision has taken place (or as he puts it, the

splitting of reality into the virtual and real). For this, he suggests rather sardoni-

cally, we will need stereoscopic vision to maintain one eye on the physical

world and one eye on the virtual world. In interview, Virilio (1995c) conveyed

the problem with double vision:

We face a duplication of reality. The virtual reality and the real reality double therelationship to the real . . . We now have a possibility of seeing at a distance, ofhearing at a distance, and of acting at a distance, and this results in a process ofde-localization, of the unrooting of the being. To be used to mean to be some-where, to be situated, in the here and now, but the situation of the essence ofbeing is undermined by the instantaneity, the immediacy, and the ubiquity whichare characteristic of our epoch . . . From now on, humankind will have to act intwo worlds at once. This opens up extraordinary possibilities, but at the same timewe face the test of a tearing-up of the being, with awkward consequences. We canrejoice in these new opportunities if and only if we are conscious of their dangers.

So rather than set the virtual against the real visual experience, Virilio (1997b)suggests that we have to think of the co-presence of the two. They transpear

either side of the screen. This induces a

. . . split in time between the real time of our immediate activities in which weact both here andnow and the real time of media interactivity that privilegesthe now of the timeslot of the televised broadcast to the detriment of the here.(p. 37).

But there is another, more sinister doubling of vision that Virilio appears quite

obsessive about. This is the doubling of vision created by vision machines

visual technology that is semi-automated and first used by the American mili-tary for precision bombing during the Gulf War. He paraphrases artist Paul Klee

by declaring that now objects perceive me (Virilio, 1994a: 59), to create a

rather paranoid interpretation of how the relationship between subject and

object of vision has been reversed through semi-automation. However, we

might consider Skys recent insertion of visual monitors in satellite boxes or the

recent popularity of live docu-soaps such as Big Brother as a prelude to a

future of automated sight and tele-surveillance entertainment that enables us to

see beyond the human field of vision.




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According to Virilio the doubling of vision induces picnolepsy.8 Virilio

(1991a, b) uses the term picnolepsy in a metaphorical sense to describe how

we can become unaware of real time, real place events by immersing oneself in

visualizing technology. As Cubitt (2000) has argued, Virilio is less concerned

with the subordination of the viewer to the images actually produced by visual-

izing technology, than the experience of the vision machine itself. The

picnoleptic moment, as explained by Virilio, is a moment of disorientation,

which confirms that real time and space can be lost, however briefly. Some

commentators have put this condition down to societys craving for a height-

ened aesthetic experience, or an escape from the real world (see for example

Jackson, 1998). While we might choose to debate this view, we can suggest

with greater certainty that visual experience has become more intense as a result

of its industrialization and that the will to see all makes even familiar objects

appear as if they have an unfamiliar nature. As Virilio (1991a: 36) has argued,

there is some sort of momentum in contemporary culture to be attentive to eventhe most banal aspects of our lives because the hierarchy of the crucial and the

incidental has collapsed under the mirage of information and images. The

hypervisible condition of contemporary culture then has made the pursuit of

detail and the transference of object-to-information purposeful in itself (p. 101).

So while we might readily recognize the detrimental effects of air and water

pollution and the like, Virilio (1997b) argues that there is a simultaneous

dromospheric and chrono-scopic pollution the gradual reduction of space time

by the various tools of instantaneous, ubiquitous visual communication. It is this

pollution that attacks the liveliness of the subject (pp. 334) and ensures thattele-viewer activity is not so much spatial as temporal. That is, the subjects

capacity for thought and movement is displaced by the technology that creates

instantaneous, remote realities.

Throughout his academic career, Virilio has established and sustained a

normative position from which he has assailed new visualizing technology by

persisting with a fairly radical critique of its impact on the social condition. The

growing influence of Virilios polemic is highlighted by the emergence of new

philosophical debates in journals such as CTheory, and a new critical con-

sciousness that binds technology, society and politics as best exemplified by the

ongoing work of Kroker and Kroker (1997). But it might be said that Viriliosideas on visualizing technology are over-determined by his obsession with the

destructive capabilities of military devices. His technophobia is not only

redolent of Heideggers (1977) angst-ridden views on media technology as a

mechanism of totalitarian control, but he neglects to acknowledge the enabling

capacities of technology and indeed the adaptation of technology from its

often, but not always, militaristic origins. There is also simplicity in Virilios

reliance on idealized notions of the human subject to define theoretical

normativities. For some commentators, it indicates an almost complete lack of




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engagement with the poststructuralist critique of the decentred subject

(McQuire, 2000).

But as Kellner (2000), Gane (2000) and Armitage (2000a) have observed, it

is precisely because of Virilios extremely critical discourse on visual tech-

nology that we are able to elicit theoretical argument and debate about visuality.

Despite some obvious reservations, Virilios argument remains compelling:

there is still a need to address the loss of the object of ocular perception, the dis-

placement of direct observation and materiality and the loss of the phenomeno-

logical aspects of lived experiences with the advent of new visual technologies.

By engaging with Virilios ideas on visual technologies, we can perhaps begin

to reformulate critical space and more specifically, reclaim the time distance

that has been lost and that is necessary for the maintenance of human relations

(Virilio, 2000b; Virilio and Lotringer, 1997). This does not necessarily involve

a luddite rejection of visual technology, but a rejection of its logic to compress

time and space. As Virilio and other theorists have continually reminded us, it isperilous to imagine future social worlds by passively accepting the rationale of

instantaneous and ubiquitous communication technologies (see for example

Jameson, 1992; Huyssen, 2000).

It remains for me to present some preliminary ideas about how notions of drom-

ology and time compression might profitably allow us to retheorize visuality.

Conclusion

Virilios work on visualizing technology encourages us to rethink visuality as

an active, embodied practice that does not differentiate between the ability to

see, visual technologies and the constitution of lived experience. It prompts us

to think of visuality in terms of proprioception, where consideration can be

given to the compression and duration of time, and where the abstraction of

visuality from its temporal and historical context is rendered more problemati-

cal. Following this, it encourages us to undertake the interpretation of visuality

in completely different ways, by discharging the theoretical alignment of the

visual the conceptual symmetry implicit in the Cartesian tradition that has

formed the mainstay of visual analysis until now. If we accept that visuality is

active and embodied, then the subject (or the social for that matter) is no longer

a constant or a given. The question concerning visuality then transforms

from what does the computer/television/webcam/ tell us about social/ power

relations? to what, when and for how long does it allow us to see?. Visuality

can therefore never be complete or fixed according to some prevailing scopic

regime. It is simply projective rather than reflective.

By developing a chrono-perspective of visuality, we might also reconsider

the proxemics of space, time and the body, and the non-verbal, but importantly




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non-visual part of our world. It allows us to problematize the distinctions that

social and cultural research often draws between, say, haptic, kinesthetic and

visual experiences and reconstitutes visuality as a multi-sensory experience.

More specifically, Virilio directs us towards the implications of constructing

ubiquitous and instantaneous views of the world through visualizing technolo-

gies. This emphasis draws our attention away from highly problematic interpre-

tations of visuality, as outlined in the introduction, and directs us towards more

pressing issues that relate to the loss of ocular reality and time distance that

plays such an important and beneficial role in constitution of human relations.

Indeed, it is almost impossible to discuss visuality without making inference to

time and dromology, which is perhaps the most damning critique that could be

levied at contemporary cultures speeding up of the visual experience.

However, what should equally concern us is that the speeding up of visual

experience has forced us into a reconsideration of ocular perception more

generally, and not just in relation to visualizing technology: the field of vision,however it is constructed, has been unsettled for good. If we accept Virilios

argument, then we no longer have faith in what we see with our own eyes.

I would like to close this article with anything but a clear view on visuality. In

fact, I would go so far to say that visuality is best understood as a bit of a blur. I

am reminded of an essay written by Yi Fu Tuan (1979) on sight and sound and

the impending visual media boom that contains this salient observation as its

closing paragraph:

Every new method or equipment refines and redefines, however slightly, the

world for us. It enables us to see that which has hitherto been hazy or invisible. Onthe other hand, the clearer we are able to see certain things the more likely thatothers escape notice, or are cast into the shade beyond the edge of peripheralvision. The visual media, even as they open our eyes, blind us to other realities.(p. 422)

Notes

1. See Foster (1988) Crary (1992; 1999), Jay (1993), Jenks (1995), Robertson, Ticknerand Mash (1996) and Robins (1996).

2. See Haraway (1991), Bryson, Holly and Moxey (1994), Mitchell (1994), Robins(1996) and Walker and Chaplin (1997).

3. Doel and Clarke (1999) have raised similar arguments concerning data collectiontechnology.

4. See for example Der Derian (1992), Kroker (1992), (Wark 1994) and Armitage(2000a).

5. Harvey (1989) has been largely dismissive of Virilios work, on the grounds that it isindicative of the failure of postmodern theory. For further discussion on this issue,see Armitage (2000c).




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6. The date of publication relates to the texts English translation. Speed and Politicswas originally published in French in 1977.

7. Virilio (1997b) actually uses the term geography to denote territory and space andrefers to the death of geography as the outcome of the acceleration of technologicaldevelopment.

8. Picnolepsy derives form the Greek wordpicnos (frequent). It is a term used in psy-chology and psychiatry to describe the lapse in concentration that creates missingtime and is prevalent in children.

References

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Armitage, J. (ed.) (2000a) Paul Virilio: From Modernism to Hypermodernism andBeyond. London: Sage.

Armitage, J. (2000b) Beyond Postmodernism? Paul Virilios Hypermodern CulturalTheory (Part One), CTheory, Technology and Culture 23(3).

Armitage, J. (2000c) Beyond Postmodernism? Paul Virilios Hypermodern CulturalTheory (Part Two), CTheory, Technology and Culture 23(3).

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Cultural Materialism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Baudrillard, J. (1994b) The Illusion of the End. Cambridge: Polity Press.Benjamin, W. (1969) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in H.

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Interpretations. London: Wesleyan University Press.Castells, M. (1996) The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.Crary, J. (1992) Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth

Century. London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Crary, J. (1999) Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture.

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Cubitt, S. (2000) Virilio and New Media, in J. Armitage (ed.) Paul Virilio: FromModernism to Hypermodernism and Beyond, pp. 12742. London. Sage.

Debord, G. (1983) Society of the Spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black and Red.Der Derian, J. (1992)Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed and War. Oxford: Blackwell.Der Derian, J. (ed.) (1998) Virilio, Paul: The Virilio Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.Der Derian, J. (2000) The Conceptual Cosmology of Paul Virilio, in J. Armitage (ed.)

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Doel, M. A. and Clarke, D. B. (1999) Dark Panopticon. Or, Attack of the KillerTomatoes,Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 17(3): 42745.




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Time Society

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