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DOI: 10.1177/0961463X04044577
2004 13: 285 Time Society
Rob Bartram
Ocularcentrism
Visuality, Dromology and Time Compression: Paul Virilio's New

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Visuality, Dromology and Time
Compression
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 the
mutually constitutive relationship forged between visuality and the
Western cultural imperative to compress the transmission time delay
of visualizing technologies. I argue that the Western cultural pursuit
of ubiquitous and simultaneous vision not only creates a new form of
ocularcentrism, but generates potentially detrimental consequences
for human relations and diminishes human control over democratic
processes. The article is enriched and focused by drawing upon the
recent work of Paul Virilio. Virilios phenomenologically inspired
critique of visualizing technology prompts us to rethink visuality as
an 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 on
the 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 vision
3
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 the
world, 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 similar
chrono-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 suffered
the 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 and
Director 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
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and sometimes critical of Virilios work despite its relevance to contemporary
geographical debates.
5
Luke and O Tuathails (2000) work on geopolitics and
the spatialities of war remains a notably exception in this respect. However,
Virilio (1986a, b; 1989; 2000a) continues to write to a wide audience and on all
manner of themes, from military strategy and the evolution of cities (Virilio,
1986b; 1994a), to cryogenics and nature (Virilio, 1990; 1997b; 2000b).
To recognize the many themes of Virilios work is one thing. To identify his
philosophical and intellectual orbit is quite another. Virilio tends to make
explicit reference to particular philosophers and theorists, but in no way does he
embrace or apply the fundamental tenets of their work. His project has been
characterized by humanist tendencies, rather than sustained theoretical critique
and he prefers to distance himself from any established school of philosophy.
Virilios rather obscure intellectual heritage and overly declarative and provoca-
tive writing style that is redolent of other contemporary French theorists, has
prompted some commentators to locate Virilio as a postmodern or post-
structuralist writer (see for example Harvey, 1989; Waite, 1996). But as Der
Derian (1998; 2000) and Armitage (2000a, b, c) contend, Virilios work might
well appear as a poststructuralist assemblage of ideas that are redefined as
consequence of successive explanation and interpretation, but the ethos of
modernism what Kroker (1992) has termed hypermodernism always
remains Virilios guiding principle. For Virilio, there are some values such as
social justice that are simply beyond deconstruction (see Armitage, 2000b, c).
This rather sketchy idea about Virilios philosophical and intellectual orbit
still allows us to infer that Virilios scepticism about the techno-mechanization
of the visual practices owes much to Walter Benjamin (1969), and that his
emphasis on the fetishization of the image has been inspired by Guy Debord
(1983). We might also sense that Virilios commitment to human relations
stems from the influence of long-term teacher and colleague Maurice Merleau-
Ponty (1962), and through him Martin Heidegger. Equally, Virilios (1999a;
Armitage, 2000a) admiration for the work of his contemporaries Jacques
Derrida and Jean Baudrillard emerges in a shared, frenetic writing style and
penchant for anecdotes and aphorisms, although Virilio readily distances him-
self from what he regards as their proclivity for nihilistic philosophy (Armitage,
2000a).
With no sense of being able to successfully to locate, extract let alone apply
the ideas of Virilio, I turn now to just one recurrent strand of Virilios work
dromology or the science of speed. I will develop an argument that establishes
the links between the dromological condition of society, and the imperative to
compress time. Ultimately, this argument will allow my prompt for a re-
theorization of visuality to unfold.
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Dromology and Time Compression
Today, almost all current technologies put the speed of light to work . . . we are not
only talking about information at a distance but also operation at a distance, or, the
possibility 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 the
political 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 new
form 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 he
suggests 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.
7
There 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 something
unexpected looming up over the horizon, it is now a question of seeing what is
happening at the other end of the world . . . the earth is no longer as far as the eye
can 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, they
replace 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 have
revolutionized our perception of the world since the 17
th
century, it will not be
long before the repercussions of videoscopy make themselves felt through the
constitution of an instantaneous, interactive space-time that has nothing
in common with the topographical space of geographical or even geometrical
distance. (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 and
autonomous 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 simply
adds 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, documentaries
and 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 the
relationship to the real . . . We now have a possibility of seeing at a distance, of
hearing at a distance, and of acting at a distance, and this results in a process of
de-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 of
being is undermined by the instantaneity, the immediacy, and the ubiquity which
are characteristic of our epoch . . . From now on, humankind will have to act in
two worlds at once. This opens up extraordinary possibilities, but at the same time
we face the test of a tearing-up of the being, with awkward consequences. We can
rejoice 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 we
act both here and now and the real time of media interactivity that privileges
the 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 even
the 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 that
tele-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 Virilios
ideas 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 is
perilous 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. On
the other hand, the clearer we are able to see certain things the more likely that
others escape notice, or are cast into the shade beyond the edge of peripheral
vision. 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, Tickner
and 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 collection
technology.
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 is
indicative 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 Politics
was originally published in French in 1977.
7. Virilio (1997b) actually uses the term geography to denote territory and space and
refers to the death of geography as the outcome of the acceleration of technological
development.
8. Picnolepsy derives form the Greek word picnos (frequent). It is a term used in psy-
chology and psychiatry to describe the lapse in concentration that creates missing
time and is prevalent in children.
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ROB BARTRAM is a lecturer at the University of Sheffields Department
of Geography. His research interests include the aesthetics of landscape and
nature, theories of visual culture, and contemporary British art. Recent and
forthcoming articles include: R. Bartram and S. Shobrook (2000) Endless,
End-less Nature: environmental futures at the Fin de Millennium, the
Millennial edition of the Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, 90(2): 37080.
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