Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book. The book explains ‘The endo-colonization of society’, introduces some of the key concepts in Virilios work. It tries to set out a more nuanced view of this position that Virilio’s analysis of global politics leads to an unrelenting pessimism that simply points out the different ‘traps’ that surround us, unable to offer any routes of escape. The book provides ‘The time of the integral accident’, the author examines Virilio’s work on the potential fragility that emerges from inside our accelerated, networked societies. He does not think his ambition is to displace Marxism in a ‘decisive’ intellectual victory. Virilio knows that such an exercise would be futile: commitment in the Marxist view of history can often transcend intellectual commitment. The book suggests that there is a hope in Virilio’s ‘critical theory’, it is not a perverse and introspective examination of a hopeless and critical condition.