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This book examines drone warfare primarily understood now as an issue of technology, military strategy, and law through popular cultural forms: fiction, film, drama, theater, art, performance, and dance. Drawing on theoretical work from the fields of culture and human rights, and examining existing critiques of drones, this volume demonstrates how powerful predominantly western states engage in a double violence when they deploy a remotely controlled weapon, one which both kills the victim and dehumanizes them as a threat, a terrorist, or a racialized other. Through close readings and analysis of cultural representations of drones, and situating them in their political and historical contexts, the essays make transparent the vocabulary of human rights work, and spotlight critical questions, contradictions and political agendas which surround the remotely controlled technologies of violence.
List of contents
1.-INTRODUCTION.-DRONES, RIGHTS AND CULTURE.- Part I.-Drones, Empire and Power.- 2.-DRONE IMAGINARIES.-THE TECHNOPOLITICS OF VISUALITY IN POSTCOLONY AND EMPIRE.-3.- THE SUPERFLUITY OF IMPERIAL GUILT.-DRONES AND CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN SHOWTIME S HOMELAND SEASON 4.- 4.-IMPERIAL ARBITRAGE.-GLOBAL PRECARITIZATION, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND THE FINANCIAL LOGIC OF RISK MANAGEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES DRONE PROGRAM.- Part II.-Drone Aesthetics. Resistance and Counter-Archive .- 5.-LOOK TO THE SKIES.-DRONE ART IN THE AGE OF TELEPRESENCE.- 6.-DISPATCHES FROM THE BENEATH THE FLIGHTPATH.-A COUNTER-ARCHIVE OF DRONE WARFARE IN ATEF ABU SAIF S THE DRONE EATS WITH ME.- A GAZA DIARY.-7.-HOW TO SHARE SPACE WITH A DRONE.-JAMES BRIDLE S DRONE SHADOW AT THE IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM.-8.-NONE OF THE GUILTY WILL BE SPARED .-ATMOSPHERIC TERROR IN GEORGE BRANT S GROUNDED.- Part III.-Disrupting Binaries.-Self, Gender, Drone.- 9.-A GHOST IN THE MACHINE.- 10.-TRANSGRESSING BOUNDARIES.-EXPLORING THE WARFARE DRONE IN CONTEMPORARY ART THROUGH THE GOTHIC LENS.
About the author
Muhammad Waqar Azeem is an Adjunct Lecturer at State University of New York, Binghamton, US where he also completed his PhD in English as a Fulbright fellow (2014-19).
Summary
This book examines drone warfare – primarily understood now as an issue of technology, military strategy, and law – through popular cultural forms: fiction, film, drama, theater, art, performance, and dance. Drawing on theoretical work from the fields of culture and human rights, and examining existing critiques of drones, this volume demonstrates how powerful – predominantly western – states engage in a double violence when they deploy a remotely controlled weapon, one which both kills the victim and dehumanizes them as a threat, a terrorist, or a racialized other. Through close readings and analysis of cultural representations of drones, and situating them in their political and historical contexts, the essays make transparent the vocabulary of human rights work, and spotlight critical questions, contradictions and political agendas which surround the remotely controlled technologies of violence.
