Bunkerarchäologie

This new edition of Paul Virilio's first work, originally published in 1975 and now supplemented by a new afterword from the author, highlights the alarming relevance of the theme of the "great enclosure." Through years of research and documentation, Paul Virilio has examined the bunker facilities of the "Atlantic Wall" built by the Nazis along the French Atlantic coast and presents the findings in photographs, wartime directives, and maps within the framework of philosophical essays. "When one looks at the half-buried mass of a bunker with its clogged ventilation systems and the narrow slit of the observation post, one is looking into a mirror and perceives the reflection of our own death power, our own destructiveness, the reflection of the war industry. The bunker has become both a present and absent myth: present as for a...