"If Paul Virilio is the essential guide to understanding the digital future that is the 21st century, then John Amitage's brilliant account of Virilio and the Media explores the essence of Virilio's intellectual vision: its aesthetics, new media critique, political theory, cinematic analysis, and creative technological disturbance. Here, the writing of Paul Virilio becomes a vivid, haunting reminder of that which has been lost and gained with the disappearance of culture, society and politics into the language of new media."
Arthur Kroker, Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory, University of Victoria, Canada
"Paul Virilio is a canary in the mine of contemporaneity. For him, new communications media have remade the world as speed, accident, ubiquitous militarisation and the loss of the dimension of the real. Armitage is uniquely positioned to articulate the richness and urgency of Virilio's media critique." Sean Cubitt, University of Southampton
"John Armitage proves himself the leading English-language interpreter of Virilio's unique body of work.
Focusing on Virilio's pioneering understanding of the
transformative impact of media technologies, Armitage establishes a cogent and clear-sighted trajectory, and makes a powerful argument for both the strategic and ethical value of Virilio's thought." Scott McQuire, University of Melbourne
In books such as The Aesthetics of Disappearance, War and Cinema, and The Vision Machine, Paul Virilio has fundamentally changed how we think about contemporary media theory. Virilio's examinations of the connections between perception, logistics, new media, technology, and the city comprise some of the most powerful texts within his hypermodern philosophy.
Virilio and the Media presents an introduction to Virilio's important media-related ideas, from polar inertia and the accident to the landscape of events, cities of panic, and the instrumental image loop of television. John Armitage positions Virilio's essential media texts in their theoretical contexts while outlining their substantial influence on recent media theory. Consequently, Armitage renders Virilio's media texts accessible, priming his readers to create individual critical evaluations of Virilio's writings. Virilio and the Media closes with an annotated and user-friendly Guide to Further Reading and a non-technical Glossary of Virilio's significant concepts.
Virilio's texts on the media are vital for everyone concerned with contemporary media theory, and Virilio and the Media offers a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the ever-expanding range of his critique of the art of technology.
John Armitage is Professor of Media at Northumbria University