Negative Horizon

An Essay in Dromoscopy

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by Paul Virilio,

Translated by Michael Degener

Continuum Publishing

Due/Published May 2005, 240 pages, cloth

ISBN 0826478425

Negative Horizon is Paul Virilio's most original and unified exploration of the key themes and ideas running through his work and thought. Provocatively and forcefully written, 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 acorded to speed - over territorial politics of space. Moving through human history from the cave paintings at Lascaux that depict the first hunters, through the domestication of animals and the building of the first roads, 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.

Contents

 Foreword

First Part
The Metapsychosis of the Passenger
The Great Vehicle

Second Part
The Aesthetics of Disappearance
From the Site of the Election to the Site of the Ejection

Third Part
Dromoscopy
The Light of Speed

Fourth Part
The Negative Horizon
The Driving Within

Fifth Part
The Politics of Disappearance
The Strategy of the Beyond