Negative Horizon: An Essay in Dromoscopy

Negative Horizon is Paul Virilio's most original and unified exploration of the key themes and ideas running through his work and thought. Provocatively and forcefully written, it sets out Virilio's theory of dromoscopy: a means of apprehending speed and its pivotal - and potentially destructive - role in contemporary global society.

Applying this theory to Western political and military history, Virilio exposes a compulsion to accelerate, and the rise of a politics of time - encapsulated in the importance acorded to speed - over territorial politics of space. Moving through human history from the cave paintings at Lascaux that depict the first hunters, through the domestication of animals and the building of the first roads, to the 'stealth technologies' deployed in contemporary warfare, Virilio shows how resistance to speed and movement has consistently been eroded, and the physical world adapted, in order to satisfy the urge to move further and faster.