Supplanting the spectacle of sacrifice: Drone warfare and the anti-spectacle of the safe military body

Abstract

During the late modern era, Western states have consistently adorned the soldier’s death in war as a sacrifice made for the preservation of the body politic. Against this heritage of the spectacle of sacrifice, this article argues that the representation of the drone pilot configures what the author calls an anti-spectacle of the safe military body. He traces the nexus between the body politic and its corporeal military representative, and coaxes out the particular role of the soldier within this social body: a figure whose death is embellished as a sacrifice made for the enrichment and preservation of the state. While the soldier’s death is still coherent with the idea of sacrifice, the soldier’s body begins to symbolize a fragment of the body politic to be protected and returned home during the Vietnam War and Bush’s war on terror. The problematics of visualizing the body and the spectacle of the missing therefore trouble the efficacy of the spectacle of sacrifice. Media accounts tend to foreground the drone pilots’ protected existence given their fascination with their work and work–life balance. This display invariably forecloses the spectacle of sacrifice and corresponding problematics cultivated by the dead or missing body of the soldier. Instead, the author suggests that the visuality of the pilot and the narrative in which these images are woven construct the impression that lethal state action is effectively managed and under control while the repetition of quotidian storylines renders this site of modern warfare mundane. The article argues that this is an anti-spectacular display of the drone pilot that facilitates apathy and a politically expedient absence of friction between lethal state action and the spectating public.