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Drones and ‘the world as free-fire zone’
Fred Kaplan has an interesting essay on the history and use of armed drones by the United States at MIT Technology Review: ‘The world as free-fire zone‘ (June 2013). Kaplan provides a telling critique...
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Dead streaming
Readers who have followed Josh Begley‘s Dronestream project – which I commented on here – will be interested in this video of his graduate thesis presentation at NYU: It’s a tour de force in under 15...
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Drones and civilian casualties in Afghanistan
I’ve been urging for some time now that the debate over drone strikes must not neglect what has been happening in Afghanistan: hence “From a view to a kill” (DOWNLOADS tab) and the much longer version...
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Theory of the drone 1: Genealogies
This is the first of a series of posts as I work my way through Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone (2013), which has finally arrived on my desk. I’ve loosely summarised the project and its relation...
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Theory of the drone 2: Hunting
This is the second in a series of posts on Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone. 3: Theoretical principles of man-hunting Chamayou opens his discussion with a revealing vignette. In 2005 Texas...
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Theory of the drone 3: Killing grounds
This is the third in a series of posts on Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone, in which I provide a detailed summary of his argument, links to some of his key sources, and reflections drawn from my...
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Theory of the drone 5: Vulnerabilities
This is the fifth in a series of posts on Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone. My next post on the book will consider Chamayou’s second section, ‘Ethos and psyche‘, in its entirety, and when I’ve...
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‘Un-Manning’
I don’t imagine that anyone who has seen it will ever forget the cockpit video of US Apache attack helicopters mowing down two Reuters journalists and ten other civilians in Baghdad in July 2007. It...
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Militarized vision
Before I started my odyssey through Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone (which will continue next week), I had discussed multiple ways of thinking about the relations between visualities, political...
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Theory of the drone 6: sacrifice, suicide and drones
This is the sixth in a series of posts on Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone. I had planned to cover Part II, Ethos and psyche, in a single post, but I’ve received several requests not to speed up,...
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Theory of the drone 7: Historical precedent and postcolonial amnesia
This is the seventh in a series of posts on Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone; this one covers the second chapter of Part II, Ethos and psyche. 2. ‘That others may die’ Chamayou opens with a...
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Theory of the drone 8: From invisibility to vulnerability
This is the eighth in a series of posts on Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone and covers the third chapter in Part II, Ethos and psyche. 3: Crisis in military ethos The track that Chamayou beats in...
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Theory of the drone 9: Psychopathologies of the drone
This is the ninth in a series of extended posts on Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone and covers the fourth chapter in Part II, Ethos and psyche. 4 Psychopathologies of the drone One of the most...
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Dronework
Some recent open access work on drones that intersects with my ongoing reading of Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone. First, Philippe Theophanidis, a PhD student at the Université de Montréal, writes...
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The individuation of warfare?
Before I resume my reading of Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone, I want to approach his thesis from a different direction. As I’ve noted, much of his argument turns on the reduction of later modern...
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Theory of the drone 10: Killing at a distance
This is the tenth in a series of extended posts on Grégoire Chamayou‘s Théorie du drone and covers the fifth and final chapter in Part II, Ethos and psyche. Chamayou begins with a lecture given by...
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More unfinished business: haunting Waziristan
I’m just finishing up a new essay on drones and later modern war – “Moving targets and violent geographies” – and I’ll post the draft as soon as I’m done (this weekend, I hope). Next up is the essay...
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How we kill in war
A new CBC Ideas program, How we kill in war, airs tonight at 9 p.m. With every evolution in military technology comes a shift in military tactics. And each shift in tactics pushes our understanding of...
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Boundless Informant and the everyware war
As part of my presentation on “Drones and the everywhere war” at York, I decided to unpack this extraordinary claim made by John Nagl, one of the architects of the US military’s revised...
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Droning on
Sorry for the long silence – I’ve been prepping for my trip to St Andrews, where this afternoon I’ll be giving the Neil Smith Lecture. Over the years I’ve given lots of lectures named after people I...
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