Paul Virilio
Void Manufacturing has posted a translation, by Patrice Riemens, of an interview with Paul Virilio, where he discusses the ongoing financial collapse. He begins by applying his well-known theory of accidents to the current crisis:
“With Tchernobyl, we have entered the era of global accidents, whose consequences are in the realm of the long term. The current crash represents the perfect ‘integral accident’. Its effects ripple far and wide, and it incorporates the representation of all other accidents.”
He also makes the important point that while it is all well and good to research the immediate causes of the collapse, it should also be understood that these kinds of global accidents are integral to capitalism and are systemically mandated:
“These accidents are not contingent occurrences. For the time being, the prevalent opinion is that researching the crash of the stock exchange as a political and economic issue and in terms of its social consequences is adequate enough. But it is impossible to understand what is going on if one does not implement a (policy based on the) political economy of speed, the speed that technological progress engenders, and if one does not link (this policy) to the ‘accidental’ character of History.”
Then, in the most provocative passage, he observes that the crisis has revealed the global integration of not only financial systems but also affective, cultural and emotional structures.
“Like with any contemporary event, it is essential to take into account the integration in synchronous time of various issues at the world-level. A synchronisation has taken place of customs, habits, mores, ways to react to things, and also, of emotions. We have left the era of class-based communitarism for that of instant and simultaneous globalisation of affects and fears - but not longer of opinions. It was already the case with the attacks on the World Trade Center and with the Tsunami. The same happens now with the financial crash. After a short ‘technical’ phase - bank collapses, shares fall-out - kicks in a phase of ‘hystery-isation’ of responses. There is talk of “markets going mad”, of “irrational” reactions, you’d almost call it ‘end of the world craze’. Terrorists have very well understood this mechanism, and they make use of it.”
Just as markets are globally regulated, interwoven, synchronized, so are emotional reactions, gestures, and responses. Indeed, though it is now something of a truism that the world has been rendered global by market forces, what is less understood are the non-market forces subtending this very process.
Virilio is next asked if he believes that capitalism is nearing its end, to which he responds, somewhat in parable:
“I rather believe that the end is nearing capitalism. My field is urban studies. This crisis shows that the Earth is not large enough for progress, for the speed of History (as we have it). Hence repetitive accidents. We were living in the belief that we had both a past and a future. But ‘the past does not pass’, it has become a monster, so much so that we do not mention it anymore. And as far as the future is concerned, it is severely questioned by the issue of the environment, and the end of natural resources like oil. So the only place left for us to inhabit is the present. But the writer Octavio Paz said it before: “you cannot live in the present moment, just as you cannot live in the future”. It is exactly what all of us are now going through, and that includes the bankers.”
Obviously, Virilio is not referring to literal time, so to speak. That will pass; what won’t, is us, our conditions. There is a growing feeling that there is nothing to expand into, no space in which to grow - physically and metaphorically. Some kind of limit - environmental, political, existential - is on the horizon, and the sudden visibility of this limit is something unprecedented and new. It cannot be written off as one more apocalyptic fantasy.
In conclusion, he makes a few more, sobering remarks regarding the ’cause’ of the crisis. While he agrees that greed played a part, he finds this explanation simplistic and in ignorance of the larger, systemic causes that cannot be reduced to a few individuals.
“I am not a vigilante. I do empathise with critics who say that some people have made obscene profits. I do not deny the damage caused by the accumulation of riches in a few hands. But to merely criticize this acceleration of profits and History, this ‘run-away avarice”, as Eugene Sue called it, while remaining in the materialist framework of profit, is a deficient, reductionist analysis.”
At the same time, he does manage to find a ‘materiality’ lurking in the roots of the crisis. It is, ultimately, about land, space, and homes. In all the philosophizing about capitalism, global systems, and the impersonal, ponderous forces they imply (some imaginary, some concrete), the so-called ‘real’ can easily be misplaced. And for Virilio, however much we speculate as to the cause of the collapse, its effects, at least, are material, unambiguous, and unmistakable.
“Where did the current crisis stem from? the answer is: subprime mortgages; housing credit that proved unsustainable; land. The victims are the hundred of thousands of people who are going to lose their homes. The whole concept of sedentarism had already been challenged by immigrants, exiles, deportations, refugees - and the delocalisation of economic activities. This phenomenon is bound to increase. Till 2040, one billion people will have to move out from their their residence. Those are the victims. We are in the realm of “stop/eject”. People are arrested, get expelled.”
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