Tracy Graves

Position Paper: Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics

 

In his treatise Speed and Politics, Paul Virilio attempts to trace the impact of speed and mobility on modern civilization throughout history. Specifically, Virilio’s text examines the effects of the accelerated motivity of weapons, information, goods and—not least of all—people.  Circulated (as goods are), functioning as channels of communication, and pivotal to sustaining the autonomy and economy of the state, “people” are the most critical element in Virilio’s analysis. 

 

Movement defines the life of the people, or “masses,” as Virilio is wont to call them. Our cities, the crossroads of the masses, are themselves emblematic in their positionalities at the confluence of motion, of projectiles or trajectories of travel.  The roads and waterways (and even the air)—these “trajectories of travel”—facilitate the mobility of people, goods and information.  The regulation of movement, a governmental act, consists in the institution of fixed domicile (the mainstay of power for the bourgeoisie), speed limits, restricted airspace and even weapons systems to control movement of enemies both inside and outside of the social system.  The notion of a “beyond” of experience has pushed governments to extend their power and control across nations and territories, first and foremost by regulating the lives and habits of citizens and conquered or colonized peoples. 

 

For Virilio, government and military (both regulatory mechanisms) are inextricably linked, that is to say, there is a constant interplay between the two.  The excess of capital circulating inside of a territory or nation supports a military that in turn both protects that  capital and ensures new forms of economic security.  The nature of the relationship between capital interests and military development operates in an upward spiral, escalating into newer technology and faster speeds.  But how does it affect the foundation of society? 

 

The instruments of the aforementioned military mechanism to which Virilio returns time and again are the masses.  He conceives of these masses as dromomaniacs (compulsive walkers), i.e. a multitude of passersby who comprise a revolutionary contingent ontologically threatening to the governmental apparatus at hand.  The measure of a government’s power is in its control of the street where passersby idly collect, awaiting the chance to become a part of the revolutionary mechanism, movement itself.  But these masses, this pre-proletarian bulk, is just that: a collectivity, whose will is malleable and ultimately in the hands of propagandists (including those of the governmental apparatus).  Through processes of military and industrial proletarianization, Virilio’s dromomaniacs carry out the will of politicians (provided the government’s regulations of movement succeed).  The masses are subsequently made part of the very governmental apparatus that exploits their desire for mobility, putting it to use in the securing and surveillance of territory and the industry of war.

 

Perhaps nowhere has the revolutionary street culture of the masses been harnessed with such purpose and to such an extent as in Germany during the Nazi-period.  The relationship between power and mobility was made manifest in the countless parades and rallies which took place in the streets and on the squares of the cities of Nazi-Germany.  Probing Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, can we locate the tenets of Virilio’s “will to speed” in the propaganda put forth by the totalitarian state of Germany?  How is it manifest?  Is speed to be found strictly in the content of the National Socialist message?  Or can we see speed as a mechanism of the filmic apparatus as well?  How is speed used to affect a mobilization of the masses both within and through propaganda?     

 

Is Virilio’s indictment of speed an oversimplification of the problematic nature of the development of modern civilization?  And what of the will-less masses he describes?  Is the proletarian faction truly a tabula rasa on which governments/propagandists can easily inscribe their own agendas?