27.07.2015 - 02:02 [ e-ir ]

Death from above: Drones, Visuality and the Politics of Killing

This essay evaluates how the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), or ‘drone’ camera, as a medium of visual representation, impacts on the waging of contemporary warfare. In particular, this essay assesses the extent to which the drone camera assists the US drone pilot in killing. The prevailing literature contends that the drone camera alleviates the psychological burden of killing by visually representing warfare in a manner which spatially and morally distances the US martial body from their lethal consequences. Additionally, the drone camera, and the technological nexus it is situated within, enables killing to become a networked phenomenon, dividing the moral culpability between multiple actors, and further alleviating the psychological burden of killing-by-drone.