The Text
Virilio’s Screen: The Work of Metaphor in The Age of Technological Convergence by Anne Friedberg
Friedberg’s brief but insightful essay examines Paul Virillio’s use of the screen as a metaphor in his theory. In particular, Friedberg situates the role of the screen as … “a metaphor register, a virtual surface which overrides media formation…”(184). In a sense, Friedberg argues that Virillio’s theorizing of the screen transcends the technological for the ideology of the screen, the metaphor to take precedence over the material and technological nature. Friedberg posits that Virillio’s screen is part of a ‘new logic of visibility’ that places disappearance ‘material space for immaterial space’ (186). In a sense, the screen, whether it is a film, television, jumbotron, the computer, video projection or something else has within itself an immateriality. That is, the way a screen functions reflecting and projecting the immaterial world on to the material, by creating images through motion manifests a metaphor that is mightier than the materiality of the screen itself. And it is this metaphor, for Friedberg that is so ripe with cultural signification.
Friedberg, Anne. Virilio’s Screen: The Work of Metaphor in The Age of Technological Convergence. Journal of Visual Culture, 2004; 3: 183-193.
The Technology
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