ABSTRACT
Gunthert, A. (1983) Le Voyage du TNS, Paris: Solin (account of his time at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg).
Paul Virilio’s crucial 1984 study War and Cinema (Logistique de la perception) stands unparalleled in its implications for philosophy, history and aesthetics. He argues that at the time of its birth the international film industry (in France and the United States) quickly realized that, once mobilized, its images could determine collective perception and experience. Film and publicity would provide the model for what would soon become history. The two determining events of the twentieth century, World Wars I and II, were mapped out by a cinematic institution that shaped their advent. International collusions were built in the development of the media. In all of his writing-visionary, delphic, speculative-
Virilio studies how articulations of space and language plot out subjectivity. He appeals to the architectural theories and practice of Fascist Italy, to the military practices (what he calls ‘bunker archaeologies’) of Nazi Germany, and to the history of air power (and its innovations in cartography) to show how humans can no longer think of the relation of space and language-a ground for philosophy and religion-in ways that preceded modernism. His writings are salubriously chilling in their outlook.
