Desert Screen

War at the Speed of Light

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects Critical Theory/Marxism Cultural Studies

by Paul Virilio,

Introduction by James Der Derian,

Translated by Michael Degener

Continuum Publishing

Due/Published July 2002, 192 pages, paper

ISBN 082645822x

Fully translated for the first time into English, Desert Screen is a vision of future war. Paul Virilio identifies the Gulf War as a turning point in history, the last industrial and the first information war.

Virilio presented his chronicles of the Gulf War as the reflections of an "attentive telespectator of a world war in miniature." The last decade of the 20th Century witnessed several other wars in miniature and witnessed them increasingly in "real time." Virilio argues that we live in a world of global spatio-temporal collapse, a world still exhausted from the geopolitics of the Cold War, a world in which the politics of military and media technology seem to preclude the possibility of negotiation and diplomacy.

This translation of an already classic text includes a new interview with Virilio in which he looks back at a decade of war at the speed of light.

Series: Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers

Contents

Preface - by James Der Derian
1. Foreword
2. August 1990 - Desert Shield
3. January 1991 - Desert Storm
4. June 1991 - Desert Screen
Virilio Looks Back and Sees The Future - Interview by James Der Derian