Phenomenology in Diaspora

Abstract

This article examines Paul Virilio’s account of modern technology and situates it in relation to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, and, in particular, to the account of technology and the life-world given in his major work of the 1930s, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Against the accusations levelled by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont that Virilio abuses scientific terminology and concepts, this piece argues that Virilio’s theories can only be understood as an instance of a very specific French reception of German phenomenology. In particular it argues that, for Virilio, modern forms of transport and data transmission transform individual and collective experience of space. Virilio highlights a transformation in the structure of geopolitical global space which overturns the traditional opposition of origin and exile, centre and periphery, governing the experience of diaspora and with that the notion of departure or dispersal which it implies.