ABSTRACT

Drones represent a qualitative shift in technologies of visualisation in war. They are often seen as a disembodied form of warfare in which operators use drones to wage war on people and populations from thousands of miles away. One of the most striking features of the use of drones in warfare and targeting assassinations is what Matthew Power (2013) called "voyeuristic intimacy": a situation in which surveillance of targets may last for days or weeks. The visual technologies of drone warfare can never guarantee that violence will be limited to appropriate targets, if such a categorisation can even be made. Rather, appreciating how the interpretation of drone images always already constitutes certain bodies as likely enemies reveals how visuality is implicated in the production violence. Drone warfare is thus less a mode of disembodied warfare than one that strives to conceal the violent practices of embodiment that are enabled by its visual practices.