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.

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.