French cultural theorist and urbanist Paul Virilio is best known for his writings on media, technology, and architecture. Gathered here in A Winter’s Journey are four remarkable conversations in which Virilio and architectural writer Marianne Brausch look at a twentieth century characterized by enormous technological acceleration and by technocultural accidents of barbarism and horror.
The dialogues in A Winter’s Journey—structured loosely around the dates 1940, 1950, 1960, and 1980—chart Virilio’s intimate intellectual biography, from his childhood lived against the unstable backdrop of a heavily bombed, wartime Nantes to maturity in a crisis space that is neither entirely militarized nor yet fully civilian, but somewhere between the two. In the course of these conversations, Virilio and Brausch ultimately find hope that in understanding the events of the last century and the cultural responses spawned by them, we can create a more humane era that is more adept at handling the transformations of its technology and culture.
A Winter’s Journey is a revealing and engaging look into the intellectual life and ideas of one of the most influential theorists of contemporary civilization.
Table of Contents
1940 or the Origins of the Countdown
Interview 2. ‘It’s the Invisible Space that Enables us to see the Visible’
1950 or the Birth of the Thinker of the In-Between
Interview 3. On the Oblique as a Principle of Life: From Bunker to ‘Free Plan’
1960: War and Peace
Interview 4. From Globalization to the Planet’s Last Gallop
1980 or the Desire to be Hungry in spite of Everything
Be the first to know
Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!