Robin Chapman, Department of English Literature
Introduction
In Interdisciplinary Measures: Literature and the Future of Postcolonial Studies, Graham Huggan states that, “postcolonial literary/ cultural criticism [. . .] is, by definition, a comparative field”.[1] Post-colonialism, as a study of previously colonised cultures, incorporates the multitudinous socio-political and cultural phenomena of its environment. The intersections between such types of criticism (for example, trauma theory, race, and literary studies) are infinite as its implicit breadth breeds this extensive multiplicity of critical communication and dialogue. As Larry Grossenberg, Paula Treichler, and Carry Nelson write of post-colonialism, it is “an interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and sometimes counter-discursive field that operates in the tensions between its tendencies to embrace both a broad anthropological and a [. . .] humanistic conception of culture”.[2] These “tensions” demonstrate the continual intersection of critical practice. It is these products of such intersection that this article explores, utilising post-colonialism’s multifaceted nexus of critical approaches to elucidate the operations of the post-human within late modern, neo-colonial warfare. Here the ‘post-human’ refers to the study of new hybridised forms of human existence. The main area of study for this article, then, is to explore a new form of human existence within and after the colonial project. It utilises postcolonial critics’ discussions of the operations of oppressive power, specifically the work of Achille Mbembe, Derek Gregory, and Giorgio Agamben, to theorise the role of the contemporary coloniser.[3] This article focuses on a singular combination of post-colonialism’s critical intersections, namely the combination of post-colonialism, post-humanism, and Deleuzian approaches to cinema. This demonstrates a new entity within Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (2014)—the post-human coloniser.[4]
In the wake of 9/11, U.S. imperialism has become increasingly strategic, efficient, and aggressive in its occupation of foreign soil. The War on Terror harnesses colonial ideologies, creating the orientalist “imaginative territory[ies]” of Iraq and Afghanistan.[5] This work posits that “self-constructions require constructions of the Other”, enabling U.S. forces to generate a modality of death that becomes constitutive; the destruction of the “Other” creates and validates the self.[6] Here the “Other” exists as the negatively defined opposition to the U.S. forces; they are savage and inhuman within the eyes of the coloniser. As such, this article counters the neo-liberal meta-narrative that defence analysts, such as P. Huber and M.P. Mills, perpetuate.[7] Through such technological advancements as “C4I (Command, Control, Computers, Communications, and Intelligence)”, “Swarming”, and “Network-centric Warfare” the perpetuation of neo-colonial ideologies has become implicitly bound to the apparatuses of death that enforce them.[8] As Paul Virilio states “[E]ven when weapons are not employed, they are active elements of ideological conquest”.[9] The augmentation of self with weaponry creates an amalgamation that generates death in order to perpetuate both colonial and techno-cultural ideologies. The confluences of neo-colonialism and post-humanism conceptualises the workings of such ideological weaponry within the ontology of the coloniser. This work theorises this ‘amalgamation’ as the ‘post-human coloniser’—a being constructed through the innate political discourses of life and death (thanatopolitics) of late modern warfare.
Within neo-colonialism, the boundaries between corporeality, self, death and technology become porous, since the post-human is conceptualised as a refiguring, mutable entity. The function of such a being, as Benjamin Noys states, is to “rework and transform the messy materialities of the human and the technical”.[10] These “messy materialities”, however, become increasingly indistinct once the technologized colonising subject transcends simplistic notions of “the human and the technical.” This subject presents an entity defined by not only its assimilation with technology, but its active consumption and perpetuation of colonial and “techno-cultural” ideologies.[11] Bio-technologic intermingling is heavily present within Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper—a film which presents a techno-fetishistic western perspective upon the Iraq war. This film promotes the ‘coloniser’s gaze’, transforming the colonised into an unknowable ‘Other’. As Paul Gilroy states, the colonised are “deprived of their individuality, their humanity, and thus alienated from species life”.[12] They become exiled to the boundaries of being; not bestialised as the term “species” indicates, but rather defined by their mortal temporality, their “bare life”.[13] Techno-cultural ideologies are also imbued within the film’s gaze, as the efficiency of killing the established ‘Other’, the “kill chain”, is celebrated.[14] The formation of the technologized coloniser, in this film’s case (the American Sniper) Chris Kyle, is implicit within the ability to kill. Weaponry and machinery innately constitutes Kyle’s process of, in Deleuzian terminology, “becoming”.[15]
One sees the malleability of the human and the technical as the porous boundaries of sensory perception and self within military corporeality are exposed. Foucauldian “bio-politics” acts within the physicality of the post-human coloniser, as the dictation of life’s temporality is a defining feature of the sovereign.[16] Here “bio-politics” refers to the mechanics of the control of human life. These porous and malleable, in Judith Butler’s terms, “boundaries” of body, self and technology are further explored as the subject, Kyle, ingests the technological operations of cinema.[17] Butler’s conceptualisations of the body transfigure notions of regimented corporeality, redefining physicality through action and interaction. Kyle’s interaction with the movements of the camera and textual presentation means that he internalises the form of the film within his body. Targeting is then scrutinised as the vision of the subject is imbued with the intent to kill. Both the works of Jacques Derrida and Achille Mbembe highlight the way in which death contributes to the perpetual process of becoming the post-human coloniser experiences. American Sniper exemplifies “the conceptualisation of humans and machines as functionally interchangeable”.[18] This article, however, demonstrates that Eastwood’s work goes beyond exploring the parallels of the human body and the machine. The merging of the two creates a “conceptualisation” of the perpetually refiguring, and “becoming”, post-human coloniser.[19] The subject, much like the modality of late modern warfare it is complicit in, becomes a shifting malleable entity defined by the perpetuation of colonial and techno-cultural ideologies; to identify and kill.
This article utilises the confluences of such conceptual frameworks as post-humanism, postcolonialism, and Deleuzian approaches to cinema to theorise that Death resists its finality as the self is reconstituted through the act of killing within American Sniper.
Analysis
Firstly, within American Sniper the subject’s sensory functions merge with technology and the act of killing. Breathing, hearing, and sight are imbued with the post-humanist traits of a technological assimilation. This technologizing of the self also demonstrates the embodiment of colonial ideology. Every sensory perception of the coloniser reduces the colonised to the ‘Other’ and marks the efficiency of killing. Breathing, as a recurring auditory motif, occurs during a scene in which Kyle kills a child who has been handed a grenade. Here the non-diegetic, expressionistic noises subside in order to forefront Kyle’s inhalation. The motif creates the tension of Kyle’s judgement as to whether to shoot a child. It also, however, generates a diegetic soundscape of the process of living. Killing merges with the auditory rhythms of the perpetuation of existence. The subject’s becoming is integrated within the inhalation of the mechanics of assessing “killability”.[20] John Hockney notes that “these patterns of inhalation and exhalation constitute the mechanisms via which their (the soldier’s) internal automatic processes interrelate with the socially mediated process of delivering fire”.[21] For Hockney, drawing breath highlights the mechanical nature of the human body; defining the subject as mechanised but not technologized. Linking these “automatic processes” to the social relations of operating weaponry, however, proves more useful in demonstrating the colonial ideology as manifest within the breath of the subject. The audio-visual juxtaposition of the life of the coloniser with the death of a colonial infant suggests the innate “thanatopolitics” of the subject’s existence.[22] Kyle is not only alive but dictates the temporality of the lives of others; he exercises thanatopolitical control. A Foucauldian discourse of “bio-politics”, the control of human life, constitutes the breath of the post-human coloniser.[23] The life of the subject perpetuates the “dispositif” (the structuring mechanics of power) of neo-colonial war.[24] Gassan Hage writes, “every breath of fresh air becomes imagined as a line behind which the enemy […] lurks”.[25] The perpetuation of existence becomes predicated upon the power relationships between the subject and “Other”. Eastwood’s soundscape demonstrates the construction of a post-human, neo-colonising subject, the existence of which is defined through colonial, techno-cultural ideologies that are masked as nationalist heroism. Through a confluence of the postcolonial and the post-human, the boundaries of corporeality, technology, and self are demonstrated as inexplicably porous as breathing manifests the perpetual becoming of the post-human coloniser.
Processes of becoming are further explored within the subject’s auditory perceptions. Whilst at a garage Kyle hears the sound of a drill and mistakes it for a weapon (the drill being a choice torturing mechanism of a target within the colony known as ‘The Butcher’). Here an invasion of the psyche by the technological occurs. Once again, this perpetuates colonial and techno-cultural ideologies, as Kyle struggles to define the ‘threat’ within everyday life. As the subject hears the drill the editing speed increases, demonstrating the urgent delineation of the technologies of death surrounding him. An eye-line match and a point of view shot (POV) situate the viewer within Kyle’s consciousness. The mechanics of cinema merge the auditory perception of the drill with the subjective constitution of Kyle’s being. Craig Martin identifies this as the “connective sonic topology of being”.[26] Martin’s assertion of the ‘connectivity’ of auditory perception is problematic because the ‘techno-sensory’ is presented in this scene as being deliberately invasive. Kyle’s “sonic topology of being” is displaced as it assimilates with the technological operations of contemporary warfare. This continues as a slow zoom restricts the parameters of the frame surrounding the subject’s face. The zoom, as a technological apparatus, infests Kyle’s psyche. The increase in off-screen space demonstrates the potential for the invasion of the subject’s mind. This unseen diegesis highlights the threat to Kyle’s becoming. Robert J. C. Young crystallises this vulnerability when he writes of “being the form in which terror mimics the invasion of the psyche”.[27] Young’s assertion aligns the becoming of the subject and colonial ideology as the drill generates the “terror” of the colony for the neo-coloniser. The “invasion of the psyche” occurs as the post-human coloniser wishes to identify and neutralise the threat, to assimilate with the “kill chain”. The techno-sensory actively constitutes the becoming of the technological coloniser. The subject’s reforming is perpetual as he, once again, ingests the neo-colonial and post-human modalities of consciousness: to identify and kill.
Representations of the techno-sensory continue within the individual’s optical perception. Subjectively constituted vision is implicitly technologized. Eastwood is introducing a “scopic regime” within the viewership as the operations of cinema situate the viewer and the subject within weaponry, demonstrating the porous boundaries of self, corporeality, and technology.[28] Here Eastwood creates and presents an overlaying film form that is mediated by other technologies to establish the narrative as dependent upon the technicity coloniser, and, therefore, the death of the colonised. The “regime”, then, is a construction of the filmmaker; one that structures the audiences’ perceptions and view of the colonial project. It, therefore, facilitates the becoming of the post-human coloniser as the subject internalises the technicity of the filmic medium and the implicit techno-cultural and colonial ideologies. This occurs, once again, during the scene in which Kyle shoots a child. A POV is used, however, it is filtered through the cross hairs of the rifle. One is situated within the very scope of the rifle and camera; corporeality becomes determined by technological apparatus. The camera itself is invested within the methodology of killing and, as such, becomes part of the subject. Deleuze writes of such notions, “the sole cinematographic consciousness is not us, the spectator, nor the hero; it is the camera, sometimes human, sometimes inhuman or superhuman”.[29] For Deleuze the technological operations of the camera itself manifest consciousness. The subject’s POV becomes implicitly imbued within the “superhuman” traits of a technologically transfigured consciousness. The boundaries between self and technology are non-existent as the camera amalgamates with the subject’s techno-biological perception. This Deleuzian reading reinforces the “scopic regime” as the subject fundamentally augments the gaze the viewer holds. The filter itself transforms the frame, artificially manipulating the subject’s and audiences’ perception into the techno-cultural and colonial ideology of the post-human coloniser. The aiming module dictates the innate “thanatopolitics” of the subject, representing the inhabitants of the colony as targets and “Other”. The Deleuzian consciousness of the POV assimilates into the “culturally or techno-culturally mediated ways of seeing”.[30] The ingesting of the operations of cinema creates a modality of viewership that transforms the colony into a system of targets and efficient methods of generating death. Consciousness is predicated upon the ability to kill. One sees the merging of self and the mechanics of cinema in order to create a subject defined by the “scopic regime” of late modern colonial warfare. The neo-colonial subject is assembled and refigured through the intercommunications and “tensions” of postcolonial, post-human, and Deleuzian theorisations.[31]
The modality of viewership, to identify and kill, is explored further during a scene in which Kyle is training on a firing range. The implementation of the colonial and techno-cultural ideologies of late modern warfare are implicit. The instructor berates Kyle for not hitting his established target. Kyle denies that he is missing, stating “there’s something out there”. Eventually, Kyle identifies and kills a rattlesnake. Once again the subject becomes constituted through his ability to actively identify and target the immediate ‘threat’ of the environment. This “scopic regime” creates a perception that is permeated by the intent to kill. As the instructor states, “there is nothing out there but the target”. Reducing the visual to a ‘threat’ and a ‘solution’ embodies the techno-cultural ideologies of the post-human coloniser. One must look, to find, to kill. This central act of targeting that creates the subject is written by McKenzie Wark, who states, “to target is to blaze across the agonising gap between self and world, between cognition and object”.[32] Targeting constitutes the externalisation of consciousness. The subject interrelates self and situation through the location of the “object”. For Wark targeting and shooting function within metaphysics and existentiality. The post-human coloniser relates to the colonised as “Other” and as target; their death contributes to the perpetual becoming of the self as it defines the polarity of the subject’s existence. The target becomes the ‘constitutive other’. The rattlesnake, much like Mustafa (Kyle’s colonised doppelganger), validates and constitutes Kyle’s modality of perception. Killing the naturalised, normative threat generates the “scopic regime” of the post-human coloniser, as it validates the structuring technology that situates the gaze. Kyle’s being as (Adorno’s notion of) the ‘subjectless weapon’ falls under scrutiny, since the subject’s constitution of self is derived from weaponry.[33] The merging of self and the ability to kill is so intricate that to define the weapon as “subjectless” or the subject as without the technology of death is to fundamentally miscomprehend the entity of the post-human coloniser. Targeting and killing demonstrate the unique whole of the technologized subject. Adorno’s divisionary lexicon is rendered redundant in the face of the post-human colonising “hunter killer”.[34] Targeting perpetually constitutes the technologized subject as it consists of the colonial, techno-cultural, and Deleuzian modalities of consciousness.
These modalities continue throughout American Sniper. Targeting and the ingesting of the operations of cinema are present during a scene in which Kyle aims to shoot an enemy sniper who is more than a mile away. The “scopic regime” of the coloniser’s gaze is enforced as the subject’s defining moment arises from the ability to identify and kill a targeted ‘Other’ that is past the distance of normative ‘human’ perception. As Anthony Synnott states, “the eye also creates the I” as the post-human coloniser becomes constituted through his modality of perception; consciousness becomes externalised.[35] Once again, POVs situate and merge the technologies of weaponry, camera, corporeality, and self. Shot reverse shot sequences elongate the barrel of the sniper rifle and present it as part of Kyle’s “bodily morphology”.[36] Most importantly, however, the technique of slow motion is used as Kyle discharges his rifle. Here there is a deliberate and artificial distortion of diegetic space-time, depicting the subject’s ability to render the temporality of the “kill chain” pliable and malleable. Death becomes imbued within the subject’s externalisation of self. Physical and metaphysical boundaries become indistinct as the post-human coloniser alters the time-space that constitutes death. Virilio writes of this manipulation of space-time through technological perception, stating “as in cinema, what happens is governed not by a single space-time principle but by its relative and contingent distortion”.[37] The subject’s externalisation of consciousness operates to highlight the “contingent distortion” of becoming a technologized self. Space and time bend themselves to the consciousness of the post-human coloniser, demonstrating the innate thanatopolitical power of the “hunter killer” role.[38] This “distortion” is a visual and temporal representation of the constitution of the subject.
This artificial manipulation of the pace extends to focus upon the eyes of Kyle, the ‘American Sniper’, and Mustafa, the ‘Other’ Sniper. Even within the augmentation of the subject’s space-time the “scopic regime” is still enforced. The perception of both characters are highlighted as Eastwood fervently denies and terminates the view of the colonised. One is granted, as Pip Thornton states whilst paraphrasing Donna Harraway, “a view from a self-consciously marked body with its own situated, partial and often flawed fields of knowledge”.[39] It is this “flawed” and “partial” perspective that constitutes the ‘coloniser’s gaze’. Within the extrapolation of the “hunter killer” consciousness the colonised is presented as “Other” and a target; a “homo sacer”. Slow motion enforces the colonial and techno-cultural ideologies of the post-human coloniser. The pace of the film comes to represent the efficiency of the kill chain, whilst focusing upon the denial of the colonised view highlights the “scopic regime”. The post-human coloniser is defined by his ability to identify and kill, once again, internalising the transmutations of the inter-critical multilogue inherent in late modern warfare.
Death as constitutive of the post-human coloniser continues to be explored. The subject’s becoming is punctuated by the systematic killings of colonised “others”. This, once again, occurs during a scene in which Kyle kills a child and a woman, presumably, the child’s guardian. Once again, slow motion demonstrates the externalisation of the subject’s consciousness. There is also a POV through the scope of the rifle. The combination of these two self-consciously formalising techniques results in the defining moment of the becoming of the technologized subject. Kyle’s externalisation of consciousness augments the diegetic space-time. The audience watches, through the POV, the subjectively rendered representation of death, transforming the “kill chain” into a malleable entity of consciousness turned projectile. Slowing the pace of the film demonstrates the temporality of life. The subject’s ability to mutate and dictate such temporality transforms the self. As Achille Mbembe states, “the human being truly becomes the subject [. . .] in the struggle and the work through which he or she constructs death.”[40] The “struggle and the work” of constructing self through death is emblemised by the slow motion and POV. The process is elongated and attenuated in order to emphasise the constitutive becoming that the taking of life grants the post-human coloniser. The operations of cinema and film form become part of the process of killing as they formulate the temporal parameters of the “Other’s” existence. The “scopic regime” is reinforced as the subject’s becoming is defined by the ability to “construct” the technologically mediated death of the colonial “Other”.
This “Other” transcends physical boundaries. As the guardian falls, her black burqa shrouds and envelops her distinguished corporeality. Eastwood deliberately evokes the western iconography of death, the grim reaper. There is an explicit generation of mortal symbolism that defines and constitutes the subject’s actions and being. Derrida’s work highlights this process of becoming. He states, “only death […] can give this irreplaceability, and its only on the basis of it that one can speak of a responsible subject, of the soul as conscience of self, of myself”.[41] Derrida defines the subject in relation to death as offered by the “Other”, a Judeo-Christian God or “divine regard”.[42] The subject (Abraham) becomes defined by his offering of the finality of death in the face of the “finite goodness of the gift”.[43] The constitution of self becomes through death in juxtaposition with faith. Within American Sniper this definition is less imbued with theological notions of the “Other”, instead regarding the colonised as the constitutive polarity of mortality. The post-human coloniser holds the innate “thanatopolitical” power of the “divine regard”. The subject becomes defined not through death in relation to God, but to abject “Other”. Within U.S. imperialism the subject is situated in westernised metaphysics as a Judaeo-Christian God offers a moral impetus to kill. Derrida’s “soul as conscience of self” becomes irrevocably imbued not with the threat of death, but with the very creation of it.[44] During the process of becoming, the post-human coloniser orchestrates the creation of “death-worlds”.[45] Death manifests itself not as something divinely granted, but as a systematic tool generative of self, being, and diegesis. Here through the confluence of critical approaches the post-human coloniser is demonstrated to be death incarnate.
Conclusion
The “tensions” of such critical approaches then are elucidated as diverse interrelations of conception within late modern war.[46] Here the confluences of the neo-colonial, post-human, and postcolonial demonstrate the presence of the post-human coloniser and the death worlds of their creation. The becoming of the technologized subject is defined by the ability to perceive the world through targeting and killing. It is a “scopic regime” that perpetuates a consciousness defined by the reduction of the colonised to the “Other” and the celebration of the “kill chain”. There is then a direct interrelation of the neo-colonial and Deleuzian conceptions of cinema within the sight of the coloniser. An amalgamated entity, the subject is defined by the technological apparatuses of death. The boundaries of corporeality, self, death and technology are perpetually malleable and porous. As such the sensory perception of the subject is pervaded by colonial and techno-cultural ideologies. The breath of the coloniser portrays the innate bio-political control the subject exercises, whilst the auditory perception of technological noise demonstrates their defining ability, to identify and kill. This modality of perception continues as the subject absorbs the technical aspects of film.
This article has demonstrated, through the confluence of such Deleuzian, post-human, and postcolonial theory, that the camera becomes part of the apparatus of death. As such, the consciousness it manifests becomes imbued within the “thanatopolitical” post-human coloniser. This notion also arises through targeting. Here the “scopic regime” is enforced as the metaphysical qualities of aiming and shooting are highlighted; the self being defined through the act of identifying and killing. Film form merging with the ability to kill continues within the distortion of diegetic space-time. The subject’s externalised consciousness alters the temporality of the “kill chain”, elongating and emphasising the parameters of mortality. Death is constitutive for the technologized subject as expressed through the killing of the colonial “Other”. Death manifests itself through the post-human colonising subject, the act of killing creating both the self and the diegesis. It is the “reconfiguring of subjectivity into the post-human” and the technological that demonstrates the morbid actualities of neo-colonial late modern warfare.[47] These theoretical intersections elucidate a consciousness that perpetually realises its own creation through the reduction of the colonised peoples to targets and “bare life”.[48] It is the “inculcation of post-human subjectivities invested with sovereign power over life and death”.[49] The subject internalises and embodies the ‘necropolitical’ contours of the colony in late modern war. Their becoming is manifested through the “scopic regime” of identification, targeting and killing. In late modern warfare the interdisciplinary relations of the post-human, the postcolonial, the neo-colonial, and Deleuzian conceptions of the cinema demonstrate a perpetually revolving mortal and ontological topology; self and death are inseparable.
Notes
[1] Graham Huggan, Interdisciplinary Measures: Literature and the Future of Postcolonial Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008), p.1.
[2] Cultural Studies, ed. by Larry Grossberg, Paula Treichler and Carry Nelson, (New York: Routledge, 1992), p.4.
[3] See:, Achille Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’, Public Culture, trans. by Libby Meintjies, 1.15 (2003), pp.11-40; Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004):; Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans by. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).
[4] American Sniper, dir. by Clint Eastwood (USA: Warner Bros., 2014).
[5] Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978), p.15.
[6]For an analysis of the construction of the Other as validating U.S forces see, Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq, p.5.
[7] See, Peter Huber and M. P. Mills, ‘How Technology Will Defeat Terrorism at Home and Abroad, Digital Wizardry Will Keep Us Safe’, City Journal, 12 (2002), pp.24-34.
[8] Chad Harris, ‘The Omniscient Eye: Satellite Imagery, ‘Battlespace Awareness’, and the Structures of the Imperial Gaze’, Surveillance and Society, 4.112 (2006), pp.101- 122 (p.102); John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Swarming and the Future of Conflict, No.RAND/D8-311-OSD (RAND CORP: Santa Monica CA, 2000): Arthur K. Cebrowski and John J. Garstka, ‘Network-centric Warfare: Its Origins and its Future’, US Naval Institute Proceedings, 1.124 (1998), pp.28-35.
[9] Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, trans by. Patrick Camiller (London and New York: Verso, 1989), p.6.
[10] Benjamin Noys, ‘Drone Metaphysics’, Culture Machine, 16 (2015), pp.1-22 (p.15).
[11]Ibid; Derek Gregory, ’From a View to a Kill: Drones in Late Modern War’, Theory, Culture and Society, 7-8.28 (2011), pp. 188-215 (p.201).
[12] Paul Gilroy, Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 15.
[13]Ibid: Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, p.8.
[14] Benjamin Noys, ‘Drone Metaphysics’, p.7.
[15] Gilles Delueze and Felix Guatarri, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans by. Brian Massumi (London: The Athlone Press, 1988), p.207.
[16] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction, trans by. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978), p.141.
[17] Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), p.15.
[18] Seb Franklin, ‘Humans and/as Machines: Beckett and Cultural Cybernetics’, Textual Practice, 2.27 (2013) pp.249-268 (p.250).
[19]Gilles Delueze and Felix Guatarri, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p.207.
[20] Lauren B. Wilcox, Bodies of Violence: Theorizing Embodied Subjects in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p.136.
[21] John Hockney, ‘Switch On: Sensory Work in the Infantry’, Work, Employment and Society, 3.23 (2009), pp. 477-493 (p.486).
[22] Ben Anderson, ‘Facing the Future Enemy: US Counterinsurgency Doctorine and the Pre-insurgent’, Theory, Culture and Society, 7-8.28 (2011), pp.216-240 (p.235).
[23] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction, p.141.
[24] Michel Foucault, Power/ Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1977- 1977, ed. by Colin Gordon, trans. by Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, Kate Soper (New York: Pantheon, 1980), p.194.
[25] Gassan Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching For Hope in a Shrinking Society (London: Merlin Press, 2003), pp.45-46.
[26] Craig Martin, ‘Fog-bound: Aerial Space and the Elemental Entanglements of Body-With-World’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29 (2011) pp. 454-468 (p.463).
[27] Robert J. C. Young, ‘Terror Effects’, in, Terror and the Postcolonial, ed. by Elleke Boehmer and Stephen Morton (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2010), p.315.
[28] Derek Gregory, ‘From a View to a Kill: Drones in Late Modern War’, p.190.
[29] Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. by H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (London: Athlone, 1983), p.20.
[30] Derek Gregory, ‘From a View to a Kill: Drones in Late Modern War’, p.190.
[31] Larry Grossberg, Paula Treichler and Carry Nelson, Cultural Studies, p.4.
[32] McKenzie Ward, Gamer Theory (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2007), p.131.
[33] See: Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections From a Damaged Life, Trans by. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1978), p. 54-57.
[34] Derek Gregory, ‘From a View to a Kill: Drones in Late Modern War’, p.206.
[35] Anthony Synnott, The Body Social: Symbolism, Self and Society (New York: Routledge, 1993), p.225.
[36] Lauren B. Wilcox, Bodies of Violence: Theorizing Embodied Subjects in International, p.89.
[37] Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, p.76.
[38] Derek Gregory, ‘From a View to a Kill: Drones in Late Modern War’, p.206.
[39] Pip Thornton, ‘The Meaning of Light: Seeing and Being on the Battlefield’, Cultural Geographies, 22.4 (2015), pp.567-583, p. 569: See Donna Harraway, ‘Situated Knowledge: The Science Question in Feminism and Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies, 14 (1988), pp.575-599.
[40] Achille Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’, p.14
[41] Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. by David Wills (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p.51.
[42] Ibid., p.56.
[43] Ibid., p.52.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Achille Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’, p.40.
[46] Larry Grossberg, Paula Treichler and Carry Nelson, Cultural Studies, p.4.
[47] Lauren B. Wilcox, Bodies of Violence: Theorizing Embodied Subjects in International, p.143.
[48] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, p.8.
[49] Lauren B. Wilcox, Bodies of Violence: Theorizing Embodied Subjects in International, p.154.
Track Changes 