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Forwarded message: From: Self <SAMSON/LYAAZ> To: John Wilkinson <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Innovation contra acceleration Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 13:59:05 I agree very much with John's reservations about Virilio - he (PV) is strangely unreflective in his diatribe against acceleration - as if it were not possible to identify a problem well but still think about it in a less than satisfactory way. His own writing seems strangely headlong and impulsive itse;f - it offers no "delay time" in what I have seen of it. His motto seems to be "if you must warn, keep to the speed of the traffic yourself". John Kerrigan in his review in LRB a month or so ago makes a similar criticism about poverty as a deceleration. It's not that Virilio is unaware of this, rather I suppose he fears than an impoverished "duration" whether economic or cultural is doubly poor in that it simply is no longer able to intervene. His own intervention remains problematic and faddish though. Perhaps he makes us think again of the old dualism of motion as spirit and mass as body, but with the variables much inter- exchanged. Peter Peter Larkin Philosophy & Literature Librarian University of Warwick Library Coventry CV4 7AL UK Tel: 01203 528151 Fax: 01203 524211 Email: [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%