Virilio new book+interview: facing the accident

I just translated this article from French, fro Pratt Institue in NYC.....

Facing the accident

The French philosopher and urbanist, Paul Virilio, called for a better knowledge of catastrophe, industrial, scientific, terrorist or natural.

Title: L'Accident originel (= The original accident)
Author: Paul Virilio
Editor: Galilee
Number of pages: 160 p.

Luc Debraine, Le temps, Geneva, Switzerland,
Saturday, January 29th 2005.


Urbanist and philosopher, Paul Virilio does not step back at 73. After a spectacular exhibit in 2003 in Paris, and after an essay in 2004 about “La Ville panique” (= “The Panic City”), the wise French man tells us again “About what happens”, from the Latin “accidens”. Yes, those accidents are always more frequent, always more severe than the progress contained in itself, each technological advance giving birth to a new type of catastrophe. Virilio’s ideas could be only apocalyptical. However, far from being negative, he encourages us to build a philosophy about the industrial eschatology. A new science of the ends and of the ending, which would help us face danger and panic that are lurking at all of us.

Interview:
LD: Does each invention generate its own catastrophe? What do you mean?
PV: Aristotle said that the accident reveals the substance. However, the invention of the substance is also the invention of the accident. The sinking is so the invention of the boat, the derailment of the train, the crash of the plane, Chernobyl of the atom and a genetic catastrophe is to be expected. Therefore, the accident is hiding behind the substance. However, behind the forced promotion of the techno-scientific progress, we forget to mention the invention of its accidents. The one that interest me the most are the artificial catastrophes, those daughters of progress. As progress is huge, so is its catastrophe. Nevertheless, we stay blind. We never think about the fatal issues of our actions.

LD: You keep saying that the greater the speed, the greater the effect of the accident. Do you mean that the more phenomena the more catastrophes?
PV: What is new is the serial type of the catastrophe. In the past, there were two types of accidents: the natural cataclysm and the artificial accidents, like a fatal fall from a horse. However, in the last century, this became continual. On top of the natural and artificial accidents, including the worst like Chernobyl, Minamata or Seveso, we have the voluntary accident like the massive attack of the World Trade Center. We bypass the big battle of the past for big attacks that cause more harm than an entire battalion does. Pearl Harbor killed 2500 soldiers but 3000 died in the Twin Towers, because of twenty suicidal men.

LD: Do we have to fight more against fear?
PV: We have to fight more and more against panic. The Cold War period, which was the equilibrium of terror, gave way to the Cold Panic period, which is the disequilibria of terror happening from natural accident or one inflicted by humans. Panic is the big question of the politic of tomorrow. Every body knows that fear is a poor adviser. We could pass from a substantial politic based on a common interest to an accidental politic based on emotional community. In this regard, the 21st century and the recent tsunami catastrophe have started a new public, globally synchronized and ephemeral emotion. We cannot trust it. Public and global emotion is already a form of tyranny. The manipulator, especially the political one, will not forget the tsunami effect neither will the terrorists forget about the Twin Towers effect.

LD: What do you recommend?
PV: Face it. In history, humans had to confront the hostility of the natural world, the great invasions, the tyrants and different type of terrors. Today, we have to face the terror of our own progress. The other day, I was very sorry to see the expressionist spectacle at the launch of the new Airbus A380. We celebrated that airplane, a marvel as a cult object. However, nobody said that inventing an 800 seats airplane would create 800 dead, when it crashes. I will call upon a political intelligence about the end, a philosophy of the industrial eschatology. Eschatology is the science of the end, of the world end, which is actually not at all the end of the world. The problem is that nobody dare face that finitude.

LD: How did you, as a specialist of human catastrophe, take the horrendous Asian tidal wave?
PV: This tsunami will have the same importance to ecology than the WTC attacks had on the politic. Those two events frame, in my mind, the beginning of our 21st century: On one hand, the terrorist accident, on the other, the horrifying ecological drama. Each of them is in fact a revelation. We are passing from the revolution to the revelation era. The revolution era was of ideology. It lasted two or three centuries. However, it is over. We are entering now in the catastrophic revelation, which should encourage us to a better knowledge of accidents, natural or artificial. Without this effort, we will not understand the complexity of the accidental phenomena that are happening more and more under our eyes.

LD: You advocated the opening of a Catastrophe Conservatory. What do you mean by that?
PV: We have in Paris a marvelous Conservatory for Arts and Science, where Umberto Eco situated one of his stories “ Foucault’s Pendulum”. It is a museum of progress, vapor engines, cars and airplanes. Next to it, we should create a conservatory for the accidents that those inventions generated. Alternatively, a new university that will teach the knowledge of accidents, of what happens, and will help us face our fear better, and even the panic that we expect.