Grégoire Chamayou: "How Drones Turned American Wars Into Manhunts and Humans Into Prey"
*How Drones Turned American Wars Into Manhunts and Humans Into Prey* /The remote-controlled hunting of human beings has become standard practice in American warfare./ Grégoire Chamayou April 7, 2015 /This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com./ [The following is slightly adapted from chapters two and three of Grégoire Chamayou’s new book, A Theory of the Drone, with special thanks to his publisher, the New Press.] Initially, the English word “drone” meant both an insect and a sound. It was not until the outbreak of World War II that it began to take on another meaning. At that time, American artillery apprentices used the expression “target drones” to designate the small remotely controlled planes at which they aimed in training. The metaphor did not refer solely to the size of those machines or the brm-brm of their motors. Drones are male bees, without stingers, and eventually the other bees kill them. Classical tradition regarded them as emblems of all that is nongenuine and dispensable. That was precisely what a target drone was: just a dummy, made to be shot down. However, it was a long time before drones were to be seen cruising above battlefields. To be sure, the idea dates back quite a while: there were the Curtiss-Sperry aerial torpedo and the Kettering Bug at the end of World War I, and then the Nazi V-1s and V-2s unleashed on London in 1944. But those old flying torpedoes may be considered more as the ancestors of cruise missiles than as those of present-day drones. The essential difference lies in the fact that while the former can be used only once, the latter are reusable. The drone is not a projectile, but a projectile-carrying machine. It was during the Vietnam War that the U.S. Air Force, to counteract the Soviet surface-to-air missiles that had inflicted heavy casualties on it, invested in reconnaissance drones nicknamed “Lightning Bugs,” produced by Ryan Aeronautical. An American official explained that “these RPVs [remotely piloted vehicles] could help prevent aircrews from becoming casualties or prisoners… With RPVs, survival is not the driving factor.” […] Continua qui: http://www.thenation.com/article/203713/how-drones-turned-american-wars-manh...
Grégoire Chamayou's book is a major piece of political philosphy, with great value for the understanding of the drift of the exercise of power towards more dangerously asymetric relations, and also of digitally meadiated interaction. In the French edition there is a 20-page footnote on the concept of pragmatic co-presence that I have found immensely inspiring and which I hope he will at some stage turn into a book of its own. Best, Philippe AIgrain On 07/04/2015 20:33, J.C. DE MARTIN wrote:
*How Drones Turned American Wars Into Manhunts and Humans Into Prey* /The remote-controlled hunting of human beings has become standard practice in American warfare./
Grégoire Chamayou
April 7, 2015
/This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com./
[The following is slightly adapted from chapters two and three of Grégoire Chamayou’s new book, A Theory of the Drone, with special thanks to his publisher, the New Press.]
Initially, the English word “drone” meant both an insect and a sound. It was not until the outbreak of World War II that it began to take on another meaning. At that time, American artillery apprentices used the expression “target drones” to designate the small remotely controlled planes at which they aimed in training. The metaphor did not refer solely to the size of those machines or the brm-brm of their motors. Drones are male bees, without stingers, and eventually the other bees kill them. Classical tradition regarded them as emblems of all that is nongenuine and dispensable. That was precisely what a target drone was: just a dummy, made to be shot down.
However, it was a long time before drones were to be seen cruising above battlefields. To be sure, the idea dates back quite a while: there were the Curtiss-Sperry aerial torpedo and the Kettering Bug at the end of World War I, and then the Nazi V-1s and V-2s unleashed on London in 1944. But those old flying torpedoes may be considered more as the ancestors of cruise missiles than as those of present-day drones. The essential difference lies in the fact that while the former can be used only once, the latter are reusable. The drone is not a projectile, but a projectile-carrying machine.
It was during the Vietnam War that the U.S. Air Force, to counteract the Soviet surface-to-air missiles that had inflicted heavy casualties on it, invested in reconnaissance drones nicknamed “Lightning Bugs,” produced by Ryan Aeronautical. An American official explained that “these RPVs [remotely piloted vehicles] could help prevent aircrews from becoming casualties or prisoners… With RPVs, survival is not the driving factor.”
[…]
Continua qui: http://www.thenation.com/article/203713/how-drones-turned-american-wars-manh...
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Thanks, Philippe. There is a footnote on pragmatic co-presence also in the Italian edition, altough apparently shorter: p. 117-121. juan carlos On 07/04/15 22:44, Philippe Aigrain wrote:
Grégoire Chamayou's book is a major piece of political philosphy, with great value for the understanding of the drift of the exercise of power towards more dangerously asymetric relations, and also of digitally meadiated interaction. In the French edition there is a 20-page footnote on the concept of pragmatic co-presence that I have found immensely inspiring and which I hope he will at some stage turn into a book of its own.
Best,
Philippe AIgrain
On 07/04/2015 20:33, J.C. DE MARTIN wrote:
*How Drones Turned American Wars Into Manhunts and Humans Into Prey* /The remote-controlled hunting of human beings has become standard practice in American warfare./
Grégoire Chamayou
April 7, 2015
/This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com./
[The following is slightly adapted from chapters two and three of Grégoire Chamayou’s new book, A Theory of the Drone, with special thanks to his publisher, the New Press.]
Initially, the English word “drone” meant both an insect and a sound. It was not until the outbreak of World War II that it began to take on another meaning. At that time, American artillery apprentices used the expression “target drones” to designate the small remotely controlled planes at which they aimed in training. The metaphor did not refer solely to the size of those machines or the brm-brm of their motors. Drones are male bees, without stingers, and eventually the other bees kill them. Classical tradition regarded them as emblems of all that is nongenuine and dispensable. That was precisely what a target drone was: just a dummy, made to be shot down.
However, it was a long time before drones were to be seen cruising above battlefields. To be sure, the idea dates back quite a while: there were the Curtiss-Sperry aerial torpedo and the Kettering Bug at the end of World War I, and then the Nazi V-1s and V-2s unleashed on London in 1944. But those old flying torpedoes may be considered more as the ancestors of cruise missiles than as those of present-day drones. The essential difference lies in the fact that while the former can be used only once, the latter are reusable. The drone is not a projectile, but a projectile-carrying machine.
It was during the Vietnam War that the U.S. Air Force, to counteract the Soviet surface-to-air missiles that had inflicted heavy casualties on it, invested in reconnaissance drones nicknamed “Lightning Bugs,” produced by Ryan Aeronautical. An American official explained that “these RPVs [remotely piloted vehicles] could help prevent aircrews from becoming casualties or prisoners… With RPVs, survival is not the driving factor.”
[…]
Continua qui: http://www.thenation.com/article/203713/how-drones-turned-american-wars-manh...
_______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa@server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
_______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa@server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
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Philippe Aigrain