Drones and the Annihilation-Image in Contemporary Warfare

This book analyses the entanglement between Washington and Hollywood to shed light on the violence inherent in the image as a semiotic-material agent in contemporary warfare. In the 21st century, the weaponized military drone, an image-centered machine, has spearheaded the geopolitical curatorship of the USA in the context of the war on terror. Drone violence shares the same characteristics as cinema: image and movement. However, a drone's image is not purely a reflection of the nature of war; it is more than representational, it is performative. Building upon the concept of annihilation-image, this book argues that the image wields a destructive agency as it transitions from reflection to diffraction. Rather than mirroring reality, the annihilation-image creates a brutal pattern of difference in the world. It is a destructive ontology in which seeing and annihilating are in a state of superposition. Therefore, everything that is framed is potentially dead. That is to say, by framing bodies and objects in the terrain, a state of superpositional violence is created in which one is alive, but virtually dead.

analyses the implications of the use of drones in contemporary warfare uses the film Eye in the Sky as a strategic case-study to underline the links between Washington and Hollywood re-conceptualizes the term 'annihilation-image' to underline the superposition of seeing and annihilating

Autorentext

Gabriel F. Caetano holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (IRI/PUC-Rio). He is currently an Assistant Professor of International Relations at IESB University Centre in Brasília-DF. He is an associate researcher at the Network of Peace, Conflict, and Critical Security Studies (PCECS) and a member of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). His primary research interests focus on the dynamics of war and peace, with a particular emphasis on aesthetics, visuality, and new weapons technologies.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction: How do images participate in the annihilation of humans?.- Chapter 2: Thinking and Writing (politics) Cinematically: The Cinematic mode of political theorizing.- Chapter 3: Aesthetics and International Relations: An overview of Sensible Politics.- Chapter 4: Drones: A visual, vertical, and virtual Genealogy.- Chapter 5: Washington and Hollywood: An Entanglement.- Chapter 6: Becoming-Drone: From Military Scopophilia to Annihilation-image.- Chapter 7:Drones in the Age of Excessive Autonomy: Concluding Remarks.