Virilio: Mimesis, Mourning, and Modern Technology

Abstract

In The Vision Machine (1994) Paul Virilio uses powerful imagery to warn us about the consequences of our increasing dependence on “vision machines.” With little use, he claims that our sense organs will atrophy and we will degenerate into neurologically simple organisms. This article examines his use of imagery, arguing (after Nicholsen, 1997; Saussy, 2006; and Taussig, 1993) that he mimetically replicates cultural anxieties as well as the destructive drives he critiques. Arguing that he mourns the loss of an ideal human animal of knowledge constituted through the Greek practice of techne¯ (Heidegger,1977), the article further questions whether his writing is symptomatic of “left melancholia” (Brown, 2003).