BUNKER ARCHAEOLOGY at 40

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Todt Batterie, as it appears in Bunker Archaeology

 

Paul Virilio’s Bunker Architecture was first published in 1975, thirty years after the end of the Second World War. Forty years have passed since then. Virilio was 13 at the end of the war when he first discovered the abandoned bunkers of the Nazi Atlantic Wall, 26 when he started researching the subject seriously, 43 when he wrote it, and now he’s 83. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sokal was right: Virilio’s writing is not scientific. In fact it’s not historical either. It’s barely analytical in any sort of dense or consistent way. He writes really long, pretentiously obtuse sentences. None of this matters, however, because Virilio’s portrayal of subjective emotional and intellectual responses to the subject of the bunkers he first encountered simultaneously with his first encounter with the ocean and beach, and probably, considering his age at the time, with masturbation, are extremely evocative and likely to lead others to want to know more. In the same way, through this and his other writings he directed a great deal of our collective creative attention to the issues of speed, spatial boundaries, and the primacy of the field of perception and how it is organized. Bunker Archaeology is really interesting to read, satisfying in several important regards. The photographs are meaty, and if they now seem a bit hackneyed in a dystopian “Life Magazine” sort of way, it’s worth remembering that they’re very old and didn’t seem hackneyed when they were taken. Life Magazine still existed. There’s no excuse for the flooby plan drawings, though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Considering it more deeply, the primary weakness of Bunker Architecture lies in its suggestion that there is something to be known about these relics, that they can help delineate the outlines of a map of cognitive domination which has inherited its foundations from historical forebears and in turn bequeathed its fruits to us. This is the way of the world, it declares, to abandon sheltering bricks and stone for an invisible roof of radars and missile coverage, to abandon the roof for an image of a roof in every home, to abandon the image in turn for mere intangible belief in protection and domination, and then? What to abandon? The book is full of ideas that enter through the “information” gate, so to speak, but which are not actually informative. This is probably intentional: to push the informative process back on the reader, using the language of understanding as a camouflaged facade. Virilio lets us know through coy verbal hints and dodges that the important story remains untellable. It’s a kind of abdication of responsibility clothed in intellectual consideration.

 

The approach taken by Psycho-Archaeology of the Invisible and the Unseen is fundamentally different.  We consider it essential never to lose contact with contested ground, in an absolutely physical as well as metaphorical sense, and seek if anything a more fictional and plausibly deranged telling than Virilio has provided. It doesn’t seem like Virilio wrote these texts while tripping on LSD, and we think the results would have been interesting if he had. 

 

So yes, of course we know this book. Everybody does. It’s kind of like asking a pop musician if he knows the Beatles. But we haven’t found much in it we can really use. Yet. At least, not in a way we want to admit. If anything, it’s a museum piece, and just not funny enough. Our approach to information is much more honestly dishonest. We don’t even pretend we have something important to say. We prefer to lead our reader trustingly to the edge of the roof, and then vanish, leaving him to find his way back alone in the rain at midnight on a bicycle, bumpy unpaved paths bruising his ass and shiny-eyed animals hissing at him in the dark. Then, breakfast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Todt Batterie today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some quotable quotes from Virilio:

 

My objective was solely archeological. I would hunt these gray forms until they would transmit to me a part of their mystery, a part of the secret a few phrases could sum up: why would these extraordinary constructions, compared to the seaside villas, not be perceived or even recognized?

 

The immensity of this project is what defies common sense; total war was revealed here in its mythic dimension. 

 

Many riverains told me that these concrete landmarks frightened them and called back too many bad memories, many fantasies too, because the reality of the German occupation was elsewhere, most often in banal administrative lodgings for the Gestapo; but the blockhouses were the symbols of soldiery.

 

But what is so astonishing about the war in Kosovo for me is that it was a war that totally bypassed territorial space. It was a war that took place almost entirely in the air. There were hardly any Allied armed personnel on the ground. There was, for example, no real state of siege and practically no blockade.

 

Air Marshall 'Bomber' Harris used to say that 'Fortress Europe' was a fortress without a roof, since the Allies had air supremacy. Now, if we look at the Kosovo War, what do we see? We see a fortress without walls — but with a roof!

 

And here I repeat what I suggest in my book. The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies.

 

However, the automation of warfare will allow for the continuation not only of war in the air but also of the further development of the RMA in the form of 'Global Information Dominance' (GID) and 'Global Air Power' (GAP).

 

This is because, for me, war consists of the organisation of the field of perception. But war is also, as the Japanese call it, 'the art of embellishing death'.

 

However, the Kosovo War took place in orbital space. In other words, war now takes place in 'aero-electro-magnetic space'. It is equivalent to the birth of a new type of flotilla, a home fleet, of a new type of naval power, but in orbital space!