Drones and the Annihilation-Image in Contemporary Warfare

<p>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.</p>