{"title":"As above, so below? On AHD critique, identity, essence and Cold War heritagizations in Sweden","authors":"F. Andersson, Mattias Frihammar","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2022.2156177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2156177","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, the example of Cold War heritagizations in a Swedish context is utilized to reflect on conceptualizations of heritage regarding identity and authenticity within critical heritage studies and research on Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD). Herein, heritage is perceived as a difference machinery in which difference-produced identities are enacted and performed, and a Deleuzian and Butleresque antiessentialist perspective is adopted to show how the illusion of actual, nondifferential identities is underpinned by a hypostasized reification of AHD. Based on the analysis of how gender has been actualized within official and informal heritagizations, the central discussion concerns the purported benefits of heritages and heritagizations from below, often articulated within critical heritage studies literature. It is argued that both official and informal Cold War heritagizations construct a naturalized gendered logic of protection, with the consequence that security policy issues regarding protection and military violence are placed in a nonnegotiable, extrapolitical sphere.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89347264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Together with Bloody Knife in South Vietnam: Old West Metaphors and the Kit Carson Scouts during the Vietnam War","authors":"Stefan Aguirre Quiroga","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2022.2126811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2126811","url":null,"abstract":"The Vietnam War saw widespread usage by American soldiers of metaphors and imagery referencing the mythic Old West of American history. This article examines a case of an Old West reference that has been overlooked in previous research: The Kit Carson Scouts, former PLAF and PAVN soldiers who had volunteered to work for the United States. I argue that Americans, ranging from high ranking officers to enlisted men, used Old West metaphors and imagery drawn from popular culture to interpret and understand the place that the Kit Carson Scout had amongst American forces and how the cooperation between South and North Vietnamese defectors and American soldiers was meant to function. In the process, Americans faced resistance from Vietnamese scouts who could not identify themselves with examples from mythologized American history.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73841815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Investigation into Trevor Paglen’s Drones Photographs, Military Targeting, and Looking Slowly","authors":"S. Maxwell","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2022.2116186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2116186","url":null,"abstract":"The technology of unilateral remote warfare develops continuously, and with it, an ever-rising threat to human lives and freedom from an array of actors, mostly state powers, that seek to use oppressive force against civilian populations. Trevor Paglen is a political visual artist, whose project Drones represents military operations and resources in ways that recontextualize the processes of visual targeting enacted by military drones. Paglen’s work highlights the differences between human and machine vision and creates deliberate obfuscation that renders his photographs visually abstract. Following work by TJ Clark, Ariella Azoulay and Arden Reed, I approach Paglen’s photograph Untitled (Reaper Drone) in the form of a slow investigation that highlights durational viewing. Slowness in this form creates a conversation between myself and the image that acknowledges the temporal dimension of art-viewing and resists the unilateral gaze of the drone.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81835896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Drones as Machines of Sacrifice: Enframing the Zoological Components of On-Screen Warfare","authors":"Madonna Kalousian","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2022.2116194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2116194","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how drone warfare transforms the targeted region into a zone of indistinction governed by anthropocentrism. Alwazir’s ‘Yemen Inside Out’, Behram’s ‘Not a Bugsplat’ portrait, and Chishty’s drone art undo the dehumanising rhetoric of ‘Bugsplat’, the US drone software, by redefining the distance between what is being targeted on the ground and drone pilots conducting on-screen assaults from above. Theorising the relegation of right-bearing humanness to the marginalised status of bare insecthood, I draw on Heidegger’s notion of distance, nearness, and the disappearance of nearness between the viewer and what is being viewed on a screen. I then invoke Agamben’s understanding of nearness, as I demonstrate how the artwork I examine enacts a distinctive subversion of Bugsplat’s political anthropocentrism and a challenge to the portrayal of the loss of life as something as easily erasable as the splat that the killing of an insect leaves on a surface.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75516433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Art of Drone Warfare","authors":"B. Pong","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2022.2121257","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2121257","url":null,"abstract":"The increasing prevalence of drone strikes, and the expanding applications of drones in different industries, are dissolving the boundaries between military and civilian realms. This special issue considers 'the art of drone warfare' by surveying the field of scholarship on drone warfare and drone art to date. It addresses the affective, discursive, technopolitical, and colonial histories underpinning drone systems, through essays discussing various cultural works encompassing marketing video, film, literature, and the visual arts. Despite the unresolved controversies surrounding the ethics of remote warfare, military drone use has become normalised. Examining the art and aesthetics of drone warfare helps to make its politics perceptible at a time when the logic behind autonomous military systems is becoming entrenched.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85506895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Drone Eats with Me: The Violent Intimacy of Life under Drones in Atef Abu Saif’s Gaza Diary","authors":"Sophia Brown","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2022.2116189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2116189","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses The Drone Eats with Me: A Gaza Diary (2015) by Atef Abu Saif, which documents Israel's military offensive against Gaza in 2014. It argues that the aesthetic choices Abu Saif makes are indicative of his status as a Palestinian author producing a work of testimony for a non-Palestinian readership. Written in English, the text clearly aims to persuade its readers of the challenges of life under the surveillance and targeting of drones, and the long-standing nature of Palestinian subjugation, especially in Gaza. By focusing on this mediation of Abu Saif's testimony – by both author and publisher – the article reflects on what is at stake when Palestinian narratives are produced for an Anglophone readership. It also demonstrates that Palestine's historical and socio-cultural context generates its own particular narration of drone warfare, conversant with other works of Palestinian literature.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79563615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Blame the War, Not the Troops: Good Kill","authors":"A. Adams","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2022.2116187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2116187","url":null,"abstract":"The 2014 feature film Good Kill is a case study of how hegemonic popular culture can defang and absorb critiques of military discourse. Although this film articulates a limited critique of drone warfare, its major task is to normalize drone warfare in three ways. First, it presents a romanticized view of the ‘clean’ military capabilities of drone weaponry. Second, the film shows ordinary soldiers as morally good actors who are forced to execute operationally counterproductive orders by inept superiors. Finally, it emphasizes the corrosive effects of drone warfare on the protagonist’s mental wellbeing. This synthesis of tropes enables a depoliticized understanding of drone warfare, which is morally exculpatory for drones as a technology at the same time as it represents drone operators sympathetically. Good Kill demonstrates how hegemonic popular culture can articulate a limited critique of war in the course of politically legitimizing it.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85759886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Ethical Issues Relating to the Use of Autonomous Armed Drones in Promotional Videos","authors":"Peter Burt","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2022.2119662","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2119662","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers how autonomous drone systems are portrayed in three promotional videos published by military-industrial advocates of such technology. The videos are reviewed to explore ethical issues relating to armed drones and autonomous systems in warfare. The manner in which each video depicts technology, humans, and human-machine interactions is analysed in the context of sociotechnical imaginaries to examine how the videos reflect attitudes relating to the ethics of automation and warfare. It is concluded that the videos present uncertainties and ambiguities about autonomous weapons as certainties and simple choices. Issues which are not covered may be as important as the material and imagery presented. Rather than adding to public understanding over the issues surrounding autonomous weapons, concerns are presented in a selective and sanitised manner which avoids controversy and ultimately manipulates the opinions of the viewer, contributing to the creation of a sociotechnical imaginary which downplays ethical concerns.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80914674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Language, Cognition, and Drone Warfare: Applying Cognitive Linguistic Tools in the Critical Analysis of Drone Discourses","authors":"Matthew Voice","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2022.2116192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2116192","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents a cognitively oriented analysis of metaphorical and descriptive language, showing how an understanding of cognitive linguistics can be employed by scholars working on drone texts to enhance and support their analyses. Cognitive linguistics provides a powerful framework for understanding the conceptual structure of language, and the choices made by authors in the ways they choose to construe their experiences. Conceptual Blending Theory and Cognitive Grammar’s notion of construal are introduced as linguistic frameworks through which the ideological structures of drone discourses can be interrogated. Overall, it argues that approaches from cognitive linguistics offers valuable resources for understanding how common patterns in discourse (re)produce and resist ideological stances on drone warfare, and it provides example analyses from a range of sources to demonstrate how these particular frameworks can contribute to the analysis of language and ideology.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76042893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mourning the Dead of the Great Escape: POWs, Grief, and the Memorial Vault of Stalag Luft III","authors":"Kristen Alexander, Kate Ariotti","doi":"10.1080/17526272.2022.2097774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2097774","url":null,"abstract":"In March 1944 seventy-six Allied prisoners of war escaped from Stalag Luft III. Nearly all were recaptured; fifty were later shot. This article examines what happened in the period between recapture and the interment of the dead prisoners' cremated remains at Stalag Luft III. It positions what came to be known as ‘the Great Escape’ as an event of deep emotional resonance for those who grieved and reveals the dual narrative they constructed to make sense of their comrades’ deaths. In discussing the iconography of the vault constructed by the camp community to house the dead POWs’ ashes, this article also suggests a dissonance in meaning between that arising from personal, familial grief and the Imperial War Graves Commission’s standardised memorial practice. Focusing on the Great Escape’s immediate aftermath from the perspective of the POWs themselves provides a more nuanced understanding of the emotional impact of this infamous event.","PeriodicalId":42946,"journal":{"name":"Journal of War & Culture Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87807284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}