Drone Disorientations

Abstract

Killing with drones produces queer moments of disorientation. Drawing on queer phenomenology, I show how militarized masculinities function as spatiotemporal landmarks that give killing in war its “orientation” and make it morally intelligible. These bearings no longer make sense for drone warfare, which radically deviates from two of its main axes: the home–combat and distance–intimacy binaries. Through a narrative methodology, I show how descriptions of drone warfare are rife with symptoms of an unresolved disorientation, often expressed as gender anxiety over the failure of the distance–intimacy and home–combat axes to orient killing with drones. The resulting vertigo sparks a frenzy of reorientation attempts, but disorientation can lead in multiple and sometimes surprising directions – including, but not exclusively, more violent ones. With drones, the point is that none have yet been reliably secured, and I conclude by arguing that, in the midst of this confusion, it is important not to lose sight of the possibility of new paths, and the “hope of new directions.”

Keywords:

• drones
• militarized masculinities
• queer phenomenology
• robotic war
• narrative

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to my anonymous reviewers, as well as to the members of the Enloe Award Committee, for their detailed and thoughtful engagement with this article. They inspired changes throughout the text that significantly improved the argument.

Notes on Contributor

Cara Daggett is completing her PhD in political science at Johns Hopkins University, where her current research investigates the ethical legacies of energy physics and poses alternatives inspired by feminist and post-work politics. She specializes in environmental politics as well as feminist approaches to science and technology.

Notes

1 This draws on Hutchings (2008), who argues that masculinity as a relational concept can “provide a framework through which war can be rendered both intelligible and acceptable as a social practice and institution” (389).

2 See, for example, Enloe (2000), Whitworth (2004), Hutchings (2008), Cockburn (2010), Sylvester (2013) and Sjoberg (2014).

3 The majority of autonomous military technologies are not involved in killing, but are rather used for everything from ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) to searching for explosives. However, lethal drones have garnered the bulk of critical public attention over the last decade.

4 This is a common fear; see, for example, Masters (2005); Gregory (2011); Pugliese (2013); Benjamin (2012); Singer (2012); Coker (2013); and Chamayou (2015).

5 The notion that moments of gender unintelligibility are especially ripe for openings toward more inclusive worlds is a prominent theme for queer theorists, most notably Haraway (2007), Butler (1990, 2004) and Ahmed (2006).

6 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for asking whether dying by drone might also be queer.

7 See, for example, the Stanford/NYU report, “Living under Drones” (livingunderdrones.org), as well as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's investigation into the civilian toll of drone strikes (http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/).

8 See, for example, Barrett's (1996) study of the navy, where aviators hold the highest masculine status while noncombat roles expressed a “tone of apology and justification” (139). See also King (2013), where rear-echelon troops in Vietnam were “REMFs,” “rear-echelon mother-fuckers, i.e. they were not proper men” (71).

9 These are likely different operators, but this is difficult to confirm as several operators cited remain anonymous.

10 Studies including Chappelle et al. (2014) have shown PTSD levels to be similar to those in deployed troops (albeit at the lower range). Asaro (2013) notes that operators might focus more on quotidian stresses (long hours, promotion opportunities) in these studies and avoid mentioning combat stress because admitting weakness in combat is taboo (217).

11 This is drawn from Weber (2002), who writes that al Qaeda “is neither masculine nor feminine, straight nor gay. It is what Roland Barthes would call the ‘both/and’ and what I would call ‘queer’” (143).

12 Weber (2002) makes this point about the discourse of “Attack on America” following 9/11, where “because the feminine [the neoliberal market that was attacked] is not itself contained or containable, it harbours no promise that it can morally contain and correct an immoral enemy” (145).

13 After all, the shame felt by some drone operators is but a faint echo of the shame and anxiety, as well as the historical injunction to remain hidden or segregated, experienced by bodies serving in the military but coded as women, queer or of color. The integration of these “other” bodies into sites of combat also disrupts militarized masculinities, and this could intensify the disorientation provoked by “other” modes of killing in war that depart from the home–combat and distance–intimacy axes.