Drones and the Annihilation–Image in Contemporary Warfare (PDF)

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.



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