{"title":"Drone Form and Techno-Futurities","authors":"Debjani Ganguly","doi":"10.1353/nlh.2024.a922183","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>What does it mean for humanity to inhabit a techno-planetary system in which it is not central? This essay will address a facet of this question by exploring the aesthetics of drone warfare. The drone features in my reading as a metonym for a techno-human continuum in which the human as an autonomous subject with interiority and capacity for ethical action appears as eminently dispensable. Aesthetic forms not only are informed by but also shape a mode of perception by means of which we apprehend the world. What happens to such apprehension when both the mode of perception and subjecthood defy human-centered assumptions about aesthetic form? How does one novelize the scalar complexity of distributed vision beyond the human? When decisions about life and death are ceded to a machinic vision, do questions of moral agency and responsibility recede into a posthuman realm or do they gain even more urgency? The essay pivots around questions such as these.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":19150,"journal":{"name":"New Literary History","volume":"119 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"New Literary History","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2024.a922183","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:
What does it mean for humanity to inhabit a techno-planetary system in which it is not central? This essay will address a facet of this question by exploring the aesthetics of drone warfare. The drone features in my reading as a metonym for a techno-human continuum in which the human as an autonomous subject with interiority and capacity for ethical action appears as eminently dispensable. Aesthetic forms not only are informed by but also shape a mode of perception by means of which we apprehend the world. What happens to such apprehension when both the mode of perception and subjecthood defy human-centered assumptions about aesthetic form? How does one novelize the scalar complexity of distributed vision beyond the human? When decisions about life and death are ceded to a machinic vision, do questions of moral agency and responsibility recede into a posthuman realm or do they gain even more urgency? The essay pivots around questions such as these.
期刊介绍:
New Literary History focuses on questions of theory, method, interpretation, and literary history. Rather than espousing a single ideology or intellectual framework, it canvasses a wide range of scholarly concerns. By examining the bases of criticism, the journal provokes debate on the relations between literary and cultural texts and present needs. A major international forum for scholarly exchange, New Literary History has received six awards from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.