速度殖民：評析維希留的速度社會理論

Colonization of Speed: A Critique of Virilio’s Speed Society Theory

提到速度與現代社會的關係，法國思想家維希留是一個不能忽略的名字。在維希留的學說中，人類文明的歷史就是一部追求速度的歷史，而追求速度的根本原因來自戰爭的需要。然而，他的表達風格獨特，思考脈絡並不容易掌握，本文希望對他的速度史觀做出比較組織性的整理及批判。
為此，本文由三個部分組成。首先是對英文及臺灣的文獻做簡單的回顧，使讀者稍大致解維希留研究的狀況；第二部分試圖闡明速度與城市、空間、政治、身體、國家的關係，這些構成維希留基本的速度社會分析，也就是「速度殖民」的命題。在追求速度的基本前提下，城市、空間、政治、身體等不是被速度瓦解，喪失原本的功能， 就是成為速度的載具。最後甚至連推動速度殖民的國家，也因向內殖民走上衰亡之途。
最後，針對速度殖民的命題，本文從幾個方面提出了批判與評價。首先，維希留的「速度」用法並不精準，有時與「運動」沒有區分，而「運動／靜止」反而是更基本的生存狀態。再者；維希留做了許多概念分類，但這些分類彼此之間沒有很強的理論連結，倒是他對移植革命以及向內殖民的討論有時代的前瞻性，
結論是，要從社會學的角度去評價維希留的思想是困難的。他的表達方式並不嚴謹，但原創性及啟發性仍足以借鏡。

When it comes to the researches about speed and modern society, Paul Virilio is an eminent figure. In his theory, the history of civilization is the history of speed driven by the constancy of wars. However, the way Virilio elaborated his theory makes it obscure to the public. Therefore, this article tries to review Virilio’s view of speed and explain his idea in a more approachable way.
This paper is divided into three sections. The first part of this article are the literature reviews which provide an overview of Virilio’s studies for the Taiwanese readers. The second part is about the colonization of speed. The fundamental analysis of speed society by Virilio consists of speed and city, space, politics, body and state. Based on the premise of pursuing speed, city, space, politics and body are either dysfunctional or becomes the vehicles of speed. Even the colonist, the driver of the colonization of speed, finally declines because of endo-colonization.
In the last part, the article provides some critiques to colonization of speed. First, Virilio’s word choice of‘speed’causes ambiguity because“sometimes”the word is referred more to‘movement’than to‘the rate of speed’in his statement. Besides, Virilio only focused on the fastness of speed and thus nearly equated‘speed’with‘high-speed movement’. The contrast between movement and stasis, once mentioned in Virilio’s early work, should be a more realistic portray of existence compared with speed. However, Virilio did not repeat the idea in his following works.
Second, though Virilio proposed many concept categories in order to illuminate his social analysis of speed, these categories are not theoretically interrelated. Nevertheless, his ideas of transplantation revolution and endo-colonization still offer insights to the body sociology.
To sum up, Virilio’s thought is hard to be evaluated from the sociological perspective. Though his formulation is not rigorous, it is still original and inspiring to future researches.