Antoine Bousquet
Swedish Defence University, Political Science, Faculty Member
- Sociology of War, Information Warfare, Military Science, Warfare and Technology, War Theory, Political Sociology, and 48 moreInternational Historical Sociology, International Relations, History of Military Technology, Emergent Phenomena, Military History, Sociology of the Military, War Studies, Political Violence, Complexity Theory, Chaos Theory, Actor-Network-Theory, Continental Philosophy, Historical Sociology, Political Violence and Terrorism, International Relations Theory, Speculative Realism, Gilles Deleuze, War and society, Philosophy of Technology, Technology and Society, Friedrich Nietzsche, Political Theory, Cybernetics, History of Science and Technology, Speculative Realism (Philosophy), Political Science, History of Ideas, Assemblage Theory - Manuel De Landa, Intellectual History, Politics, Collective Memory, Nuclear Weapons, Comparative Military Systems, Military Revolution, History of Science, Philosophy of Science, Ernst Jünger, Gilbert Simondon, Chaos/Complexity Theory, Critical War Studies, Ernst Junger, Visual Studies, Perception, Accelerationism, Paul Virilio, Martial Theory, Critical Military Studies, and Nihilismedit
- Antoine Bousquet is Associate Professor at the Swedish Defence University, Stockholm. His work lies at the intersecti... moreAntoine Bousquet is Associate Professor at the Swedish Defence University, Stockholm. His work lies at the intersection of war and political violence, the history and philosophy of science and technology, and social and political theory in the information age. He is the author of The Eye of War: Military Perception from the Telescope to the Drone (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), a multiple award-winning investigation of military perception technologies. His fist monograph The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity (Hurst/Columbia, 2009) is a widely cited account of the influence of major scientific paradigms and key associated technologies on the conceptualisation and practice of war in the modern era. Antoine has also contributed peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on subjects that include Cold War computing, the revolution in military affairs, jihadist networks, complexity theory, violent aesthetics, nihilism, and the conceptualisation and historical sociology of war. He regularly gives talks to international audiences at universities, military academies, think tanks, and cultural centres. Antoine currently serves as Digital Editor for the journal Security Dialogue, as part of which he hosts a podcast series.edit
From ubiquitous surveillance to drone strikes that put “warheads onto foreheads,” we live in a world of globalized, individualized targeting. The perils are great. In The Eye of War, Antoine Bousquet provides both a sweeping historical... more
From ubiquitous surveillance to drone strikes that put “warheads onto foreheads,” we live in a world of globalized, individualized targeting. The perils are great. In The Eye of War, Antoine Bousquet provides both a sweeping historical overview of military perception technologies and a disquieting lens on a world that is, increasingly, one in which anything or anyone that can be perceived can be destroyed—in which to see is to destroy.
Arguing that modern-day global targeting is dissolving the conventionally bounded spaces of armed conflict, Bousquet shows that over several centuries, a logistical order of militarized perception has come into ascendancy, bringing perception and annihilation into ever-closer alignment. The efforts deployed to evade this deadly visibility have correspondingly intensified, yielding practices of radical concealment that presage a wholesale disappearance of the customary space of the battlefield. Beginning with the Renaissance’s fateful discovery of linear perspective, The Eye of War discloses the entanglement of the sciences and techniques of perception, representation, and localization in the modern era amid the perpetual quest for military superiority. In a survey that ranges from the telescope, aerial photograph, and gridded map to radar, digital imaging, and the geographic information system, Bousquet shows how successive technological systems have profoundly shaped the history of warfare and the experience of soldiering.
A work of grand historical sweep and remarkable analytical power, The Eye of War explores the implications of militarized perception for the character of war in the twenty-first century and the place of human subjects within its increasingly technical armature.
Arguing that modern-day global targeting is dissolving the conventionally bounded spaces of armed conflict, Bousquet shows that over several centuries, a logistical order of militarized perception has come into ascendancy, bringing perception and annihilation into ever-closer alignment. The efforts deployed to evade this deadly visibility have correspondingly intensified, yielding practices of radical concealment that presage a wholesale disappearance of the customary space of the battlefield. Beginning with the Renaissance’s fateful discovery of linear perspective, The Eye of War discloses the entanglement of the sciences and techniques of perception, representation, and localization in the modern era amid the perpetual quest for military superiority. In a survey that ranges from the telescope, aerial photograph, and gridded map to radar, digital imaging, and the geographic information system, Bousquet shows how successive technological systems have profoundly shaped the history of warfare and the experience of soldiering.
A work of grand historical sweep and remarkable analytical power, The Eye of War explores the implications of militarized perception for the character of war in the twenty-first century and the place of human subjects within its increasingly technical armature.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History of Science and Technology, Military History, Cartography, Projective Geometry (Mathematics), and 111 moreComputer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence, Information Technology, Military Science, Logistics (Military Science), Military Intelligence, Strategy (Military Science), Tactics (Military Science), Artillery, International Relations, Computer Vision, Philosophy of Technology, Visual Studies, Art History, Media Studies, Remote Sensing, Photogrammetry, Photography, Violence, Virtual Reality (Computer Graphics), Human Perception and Performance, War Theory, Digital Photography, Digital Media, History of Perspective in Painting, Posthumanism, Actor Network Theory, History of Science, War Studies, Cybernetics, GPS Applications, Autonomous Robotics, Cold War, Visual perception, Swarm Intelligence, Critical Security Studies, Augmented Reality, Infrared Optics, History of Cartography, Surveillance Studies, History of Political Violence, Gilles Deleuze, Critical Posthumanism, Political Violence, Photography Theory, Sociology of War, Cyber Warfare, Michel Foucault, Second World War, Satellite remote sensing, History of Art, Machine Vision, First World War, Philosophy of Photography, World War II, Digital imaging, Ernst Jünger, History of Military Technology, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, War and society, History of photography, Actor Network Theory (ANT), Actor-Network-Theory, Assemblage Theory - Manuel De Landa, Surveillance, Photography (Visual Studies), Cybercultures, War on Terror, Transhumanism/Posthumanism, Rocket and Missile Technologies, Cold War history, Human-Nonhuman Assemblages, B.F. Skinner, Paul Virilio, Military, Camera Obscura, Critical Cartography, Virtual Reality, Actor-Network Theory, Linear Perspective, Autonomous Robots, Camouflage, Perspective, Mapping, Targeting, Assemblage, Autonomous Vehicles, Images, Digital mapping, Command and Control, Assemblage Theory, History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Philosophy and technology, Accelerationism, History of optics, Weapons technology, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (SAR images), Autonomous weapons, Military Technology, Critical War Studies, Manuel DeLanda, Art and Art History, Security and Surveillance, Manuel De Landa, Laser Weapons, Missiles and artillery, Lethal Autonomous Weapons, Posthumanism and Transhumanism, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Virtual Reality Technology, and Science and Technology Studies
This book considers the impact of key technologies and scientific ideas on the practice of warfare and the handling of the perennial tension between order and chaos on the battlefield. It spans the entire modern era, from the Scientific... more
This book considers the impact of key technologies and scientific ideas on the practice of warfare and the handling of the perennial tension between order and chaos on the battlefield. It spans the entire modern era, from the Scientific Revolution to the present, eschewing traditional accounts of technological change in war and instead exploring modern warfare as the constitution of increasingly complex social assemblages of bodies and machines whose integration has been made possible through the deployment of scientific methodology. Scientific conceptual frameworks have been increasingly applied to the theoretical understanding of war, particularly when they have been associated with influential technologies such as the clock, the engine, or the computer. Conversely, many scientific developments have been stimulated or conditioned by the experience of war, especially since the Second World War and the unprecedented technological and industrial effort that characterised it. The constitution and perpetuation of this scientific way of warfare, marked by an increasingly tight symbiosis between technology, science, and war, are best understood in the context of the state's attempts to make war into a rational instrument of policy. The book also explores the relative benefits (such as providing a unique chain of command over the decision to use nuclear weapons) and disadvantages of centralising and decentralising approaches to military affairs, as exemplified in network-centric theory and in the activities of non-state actors such as insurgents.
Research Interests: History of Science and Technology, Military History, Military Science, Comparative Military Systems, Philosophy of Science, and 13 morePhilosophy of Technology, War Theory, Complexity Theory, History of Science, War Studies, Cybernetics, Information Warfare, Sociology of War, Technology and Society, Military Revolution, History of Military Technology, War and society, and Warfare and Technology
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Under the banner of martial empiricism, we advance a distinctive set of theoretical and methodological commitments for the study of war. Previous efforts to wrestle with this most recalcitrant of phenomena have sought to ground research... more
Under the banner of martial empiricism, we advance a distinctive set of theoretical and methodological commitments for the study of war. Previous efforts to wrestle with this most recalcitrant of phenomena have sought to ground research upon primary definitions or foundational ontologies of war. By contrast, we propose to embrace war’s incessant becoming, making its creativity, mutability and polyvalence central to our enquiry. Leaving behind the interminable quest for its essence, we embrace war as mystery. We draw on a tradition of radical empiricism to devise a conceptual and contextual mode of enquiry that can follow the processes and operations of war wherever they lead us. Moving beyond the instrumental appropriations of strategic thought and the normative strictures typical of critical approaches, martial empiricism calls for an unbounded investigation into the emergent and generative character of war. Framing the accompanying special issue, we outline three domains around which to orient future research: mobilization, design and encounter. Martial empiricism is no idle exercise in philosophical speculation. It holds the promise of a research agenda apposite to the task of fully contending with the momentous possibilities and dangers of war in our time.
Research Interests: Empiricism, War Theory, War Studies, Security Studies, Critical Security Studies, and 15 moreWilliam James, Gilles Deleuze, Warfare and Technology, Military, Warfare, Military Studies, Experience, Radical empiricism, Becoming, Philosophy of War, Mobilization, Critical War Studies, Critical Military Studies, Science and Technology Studies, and Martial Empiricism
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This article traces some of the intellectual lines of force concomitant to the constitution of a research field of Digital War. It submits that, while it may serve as a convenient shorthand for information and communication technologies... more
This article traces some of the intellectual lines of force concomitant to the constitution of a research field of Digital War. It submits that, while it may serve as a convenient shorthand for information and communication technologies concordant with common parlance, the concept of the "digital" cannot in itself provide a dependable referent for demarcating such an investigative terrain. This consideration raises in turn a series of further conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges for scholars working in this emerging field, among which are the deep history of information technologies and their martial entanglements, the requirements of scientific and technical literacy, and engagement with the philosophy of technology.
Research Interests: Information Technology, Military Science, Philosophy of Technology, War Studies, Information Warfare, and 10 moreHistory of Military Technology, Warfare and Technology, Weapons, Philosophy of Information Technology, Assemblage Theory, Revolution in military affairs, Military Technology, Critical War Studies, digital war, and Martial Empiricism
Contribution to the book forum on Jens Bartelson's War in International Thought.
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Contribution to the Security Dialogue 50th Anniversary Horizon Scan on ‘Critical security studies for the next 50 years.’
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More so than in any other sphere of social existence, the brute physicality of war confronts us with the pervasive role that material objects occupy in the life (and death) of human collectives. But while the rapid and dramatic changes in... more
More so than in any other sphere of social existence, the brute physicality of war confronts us with the pervasive role that material objects occupy in the life (and death) of human collectives. But while the rapid and dramatic changes in the practices of warfare experienced in the modern era can be directly correlated to the evolutions of technique, we should be wary of simplified linear accounts that all too hastily read developments on the battlefield as incipient to the character of specific technical objects. It is only when these are related back to the wider sociotechnical assemblages in which they are embedded that we can begin to draw out the complex interdependencies and co-constitutive interactions that make up the war machine. Such an intellectual endeavour can contribute to developing more sober and nuanced appreciations of the transformative potential of technological developments than those which have animated RMA enthusiasts and at times intoxicated policy-makers.
Research Interests: History of Science and Technology, Military History, Information Technology, Military Science, Philosophy of Technology, and 18 moreActor Network Theory, International Security, War Studies, Security Studies, Critical Security Studies, History of Military Technology, Actor Network Theory (ANT), Actor-Network-Theory, Assemblage Theory - Manuel De Landa, Human-Nonhuman Assemblages, Military, Actor-Network Theory, Weapons, Assemblage Theory, Revolution in military affairs, Military Technology, Critical War Studies, and Science and Technology Studies
How does a weapon become one? What are the materials, knowledges and affects implicated in a process of weaponisation? In what ways does a weapon wield its user? In an opening call to arms, this introduction to the special issue on... more
How does a weapon become one? What are the materials, knowledges and affects implicated in a process of weaponisation? In what ways does a weapon wield its user? In an opening call to arms, this introduction to the special issue on ‘Becoming Weapon’ sets out the scope and ambition of a new research agenda for the study of weaponry in International Relations. After reviewing the existing literature on weapons and outlining its limitations, the article presents the special issue’s individual contributions, highlighting how each of them sheds new light on the constitution and efficacy of our most lethal apparatuses.
See special issue on "Becoming Weapon" in Critical Studies on Security: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcss20/5/1?nav=tocList
See special issue on "Becoming Weapon" in Critical Studies on Security: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcss20/5/1?nav=tocList
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Military Science, Strategy (Military Science), Technology, International Security, and 15 moreWar Studies, Militarism, Security Studies, Critical Security Studies, Military and Politics, Assemblage Theory - Manuel De Landa, Human-Nonhuman Assemblages, Critical security studies (International Studies), Weapons, Assemblage Theory, Small Arms and light weapons, Weapons technology, Critical War Studies, Science and Technology Studies, and Martial Theory
In measure to the development of projectile weaponry, the conduct of modern war has accorded perception with destruction, marshalling and enfolding human vision into ever more sophisticated sociotechnical assemblages of targeting. Drawing... more
In measure to the development of projectile weaponry, the conduct of modern war has accorded perception with destruction, marshalling and enfolding human vision into ever more sophisticated sociotechnical assemblages of targeting. Drawing upon Paul Virilio’s notion of a “logistics of perception”, this article charts the four successive orders of targeting constituted by the alignment of the line of sight with the line of fire (aiming), the measurement of distance to a target (ranging), the trailing and prediction of a target’s movement (tracking), and the directed navigation to a target’s position in space (guiding). Alongside the functional specification of each of these orders are concurrently drawn out the accompanying corporeal regimentations of the living organisms thus imbricated. With its capillaries now spanning the wider ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, the contemporary war machine has simultaneously extended its sensorial reach far beyond the confines of its original human strictures. Its culmination may well lie in the advent of laser technology and the promise of a weaponisation of light through which the definitive coincidence of perception and annihilation will be realised, even as it dispenses with the ocular orb that initiated their convergence.
Research Interests: Military History, Military Science, Visual Studies, Posthumanism, Visual Culture, and 17 moreWar Studies, Critical Posthumanism, History of Military Technology, Assemblage Theory - Manuel De Landa, Warfare and Technology, Transhumanism/Posthumanism, Rocket and Missile Technologies, Paul Virilio, Military, Weapons, Post-Humanism, Accelerationism, Weapons technology, Drones, Military Drones, Critical War Studies, and Science and Technology Studies
No phenomenon is arguably more central to the study of international relations (IR) than war. The history of armed conflict is deeply intertwined with the formation of virtually every nation-state and it was the very superiority of the... more
No phenomenon is arguably more central to the study of international relations (IR) than war. The history of armed conflict is deeply intertwined with the formation of virtually every nation-state and it was the very superiority of the modern territorial polity's mobilization of the war machine that ensured its historical dominance over other types of units. The exercise of armed force is still viewed today by states as their singular prerogative and the greatest calling they can make on their populations and, as realist scholars keep reminding us, the ever-present possibility of war always lurks in the background of international relations. Yet for all its centrality, the concept of war itself was until relatively recently rarely submitted to sustained scrutiny within IR scholarship. This is a paradox given the importance accorded to war within the modern academic discipline of IR at its foundation. Back then, figures such as E. H. Carr (2001) and Hans Morgenthau (1948) insisted on a clear-eyed recognition of the inherent propensity of states to employ bellicose means to further their interests as the surest way to avert, or at least mitigate, the evils of war. The original emphasis on war is hardly surprising given that the field established itself in the shadow of two world wars and a tense confrontation between American and Soviet superpowers. But it is precisely the weight of these historical conditions that gave scholars little reason to probe the concept of war in any great depth, so self-evident did it appear to them that it primarily referred to the kind of large-scale interstate conflict that had so dominated recent world affairs.
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As a singular witness and actor of the tumultuous twentieth century, Ernst Jünger remains a controversial and enigmatic figure known above all for his vivid autobiographical accounts of experience in the trenches of the First World War.... more
As a singular witness and actor of the tumultuous twentieth century, Ernst Jünger remains a controversial and enigmatic figure known above all for his vivid autobiographical accounts of experience in the trenches of the First World War. This article will argue that throughout his entire oeuvre, from personal diaries to novels and essays, he never ceased to grapple with what he viewed as the central question of the age, namely that of the problem of nihilism and the means to overcome it. Inherited from Nietzsche’s diagnosis of Western civilization in the late nineteenth century to which he added an acute observation of the particular role of technology within it, Jünger would employ this lens to make sense of the seemingly absurd industrial slaughter of modern war and herald the advent of a new voluntarist and bellicist order that was to imminently sweep away timorous and decadent bourgeois societies obsessed with security and self-preservation. Jünger would ultimately see his expectations dashed, including by the forms of rule that National Socialism would take, and eventually retreated into a reclusive quietism. Yet he never abandoned his central problematique of nihilism, developing it further in exchanges with Martin Heidegger after the Second World War. And for all the ways in which he may have erred, his life-long struggle with meaning in the age of technique and its implications for war and security continue to make Jünger a valuable interlocutor of the present.
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The roundtable discussion ‘Simulation, Exercise, Operations’ took place at The Old Power Station, Oxford, on 11 July, 2012. Proceedings of the presentations and subsequent discussions throughout the day were recorded and transcribed for... more
The roundtable discussion ‘Simulation, Exercise, Operations’ took place at The Old Power Station, Oxford, on 11 July, 2012. Proceedings of the presentations and subsequent discussions throughout the day were recorded and transcribed for editing and redistribution to participants prior to publication.
https://www.urbanomic.com/book/simulation-exercise-operations/
https://www.urbanomic.com/book/simulation-exercise-operations/
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One of the central paradoxes of our time is that just as the impact of human life on the planet’s ecosystems has become so overwhelming that it prompts talk of a geological age of the Anthropocene, the autonomous status, ontological... more
One of the central paradoxes of our time is that just as the impact of human life on the planet’s ecosystems has become so overwhelming that it prompts talk of a geological age of the Anthropocene, the autonomous status, ontological unity, and even continued survival of humans has never been more challenged. Indeed, it is at the seeming apex of human dominion over nature that the inter-dependencies and porosity of the boundaries between human and non-human forms of life are becoming most readily acknowledged. And yet, while no retreat to a putative pre-modern ecological Eden is available to us, it is only through such a decentring of the human within our worldview that our societies are most likely to endure in the future. In an era of environmental crisis, resource depletion and ever-accelerating technological change, social and political thought and practice can ill afford to dispense with an ecological dimension that fully situates humans and their societies within the mesh of relations and dependencies that support life and its metamorphoses. This paper proposes that the instantiation of a post-anthropocentric turn in International Relations will need to enact such a decentring along two main axes: the biogeochemical axis of the biosphere that locates humans within the wider natural ecosystems of which they are a constituent and the technological axis of the technosphere that encompasses the interactions and co-determinations of human societies and their technical objects.
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This article seeks to theoretically substantiate Marc Sageman’s claims of a “leaderless jihad” through the application of the conceptual framework offered by the novel scientific paradigm of complexity theory. It is argued that jihadist... more
This article seeks to theoretically substantiate Marc Sageman’s claims of a “leaderless jihad” through the application of the conceptual framework offered by the novel scientific paradigm of complexity theory. It is argued that jihadist networks, such as those behind the September 11 attacks and the bombings in London and Madrid, can be profitably understood in terms of complex adaptive systems, emergent organisations that coalesce and self-organise in a decentralised fashion. Complexity sheds new light on the jihadist movement by providing an account of the bottom-up self-organisation of its networks and the systems of distributed intelligence which allow them to operate and pursue successful attacks on the basis of partial and localised information, and this despite the strenuous efforts at counter-terrorism deployed by states.
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The concepts, language and methods of complexity theory have been slowly making their way into international relations (IR), as scholars explore their potential for extending our understanding of the dynamics of international politics. In... more
The concepts, language and methods of complexity theory have been slowly making their way into international relations (IR), as scholars explore their potential for extending our understanding of the dynamics of international politics. In this article we examine the progress made so far and map the existing debates within IR that are liable to being significantly reconfigured by the conceptual resources of complexity. We consider the various ontological, epistemological and methodological questions raised by complexity theory and its attendant worldview. The article concludes that, beyond metaphor and computational models, the greatest promise of complexity is a reinvigoration of systems thinking that eschews the flaws and limitations of previous instantiations of systems theory and offers an array of conceptual tools apposite to analysing international politics in the twenty-first century.
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The study of war as an object of social theory has in recent decades finally begun to receive the attention that such an enduring and multi-faceted phenomenon merits. Indeed, the history of armed conflict is closely connected to the... more
The study of war as an object of social theory has in recent decades finally begun to receive the attention that such an enduring and multi-faceted phenomenon merits. Indeed, the history of armed conflict is closely connected to the emergence of the modern world, the rise of the nation-state and the development of industrial capitalism, as the work of prominent historical sociologists has now shown. The ways in which societies fight and organise military force can thus shed invaluable light on their wider social and cultural dynamics, revealing the workings of some of their most intimate mechanisms of social power and the roles played by discipline, rationalisation and technoscience. Further analytical challenges await those scholars seeking to grapple with the ongoing transformations of war in a globalising world, from the changing relations of military institutions to civil society in the developed world to the occurrence of “new wars” and the resurgence of non-state actors contesting the state’s monopoly on violence.
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Scientific methods and concepts have been exerting a powerful influence on the exercising of armed force since the Scientific Revolution and the dawn of the modern era. In association with the respective technologies of the clock, engine... more
Scientific methods and concepts have been exerting a powerful influence on the exercising of armed force since the Scientific Revolution and the dawn of the modern era. In association with the respective technologies of the clock, engine and computer, the scientific theories of mechanism, thermodynamics, and cybernetics have all in turn been recruited to shape distinct approaches to the challenges of imposing order on the chaos of the battlefield. Today, it is on the basis of the new sciences of chaos and complexity that the latest regime of the scientific way of warfare is being erected. Chaoplexic warfare draws on the study of nonlinear phenomena of self-organization to propose a radical decentralization of armed forces through the adoption of the network form. For all its present flaws, network-centric warfare and its operational concepts of self-synchronization and swarming mark an important step on the path to chaoplexic warfare.
Research Interests: History of Science and Technology, Military History, Military Science, Comparative Military Systems, Philosophy of Science, and 14 morePhilosophy of Technology, War Theory, Complexity Theory, History of Science, War Studies, Cybernetics, Information Warfare, Sociology of War, Technology and Society, Military Revolution, History of Military Technology, War and society, Warfare and Technology, and History of Cybernetics
American victory in World War II was perceived to be due in large part to its scientific and technological superiority, best exemplified by the development of the atom bomb. Throughout the Cold War, scientific theories and methodologies... more
American victory in World War II was perceived to be due in large part to its scientific and technological superiority, best exemplified by the development of the atom bomb. Throughout the Cold War, scientific theories and methodologies were recruited even more extensively to weigh on military and strategic affairs. Cybernetics, along with operations research and systems analysis, sought to impose order and predictability on warfare through the collection, processing, and distribution of information. The emergence of the notion of command-and-control epitomized a centralizing approach which saw military organization purely as a vast techno-social machine to be integrated and directed on the basis of the predictions of mathematical models and the deployment of cybernetic technologies. Preparation for a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union was the primary focus of this conception of warfare but it failed spectacularly the test of Vietnam, thereby dramatically revealing its theoretical and practical bankruptcy. Indeed, cybernetic warfare was deeply flawed in its restrictive assumptions about conflict, its exclusive focus on quantitative elements, its dismissal of any views that did not conform to its norms of scientificity, and its neglect of the risks of information inaccuracy and overload.
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This article considers the place of the Hiroshima bombing and the September 11 attacks as singular acts of violence constituting major points of rupture in the historical consciousness and chronological narratives of the Western world:... more
This article considers the place of the Hiroshima bombing and the September 11 attacks as singular acts of violence constituting major points of rupture in the historical consciousness and chronological narratives of the Western world: Ground Zero is Time Zero. Geographically and temporally delineated instances of intense death and destruction, both acts have been construed as moments when the world `changed for ever'. Our schemata of interpretation — the mental frameworks through which we impose meaning and continuity on the world around us and determine the range of our expectations — were violently overthrown by those events, shattered by images that exceed our minds' capabilities of re presentation and symbols that challenge our liberal metanarratives of ineluctable progress. By bringing to the fore their aesthetic dimension and reading them through the lens of the Kantian notion of the sublime, we can grasp those events in their original intensity as overwhelming revelatory experiences. Apocalyptic both in their imagery and the meaning attributed to them, those unprecedented acts of terror represent turning-points in our reconstituted historical narratives, marking a culmination of history leading to it as well as the start of a new era in which it is proclaimed that many previous assumptions no longer hold.
Research Interests: International Relations Theory, Nuclear Weapons, Political Violence and Terrorism, Continental Philosophy, Eschatology and Apocalypticism, and 9 morePolitical Violence, Historical Consciousness, Collective Memory, The Sublime, Film, 9/11 Cultural Production, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Twin Towers, and 9/11
My contribution to a symposium on Lauren Wilcox’s Bodies of Violence
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The text of a talk originally given at the Urbanomic event Simulation, Exercise, Operations held in Oxford on the 11th July 2012.
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A response to Paul Kirby's review of the Scientific Way of Warfare
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Entry for the Encyclopedia of Political Thought (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014)
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An extended review of Max Liljefors, Gregor Noll and Daniel Stor (eds), War and Algorithm (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)
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In The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, Matthew Kroenig presents the reader with a research puzzle he sets out to resolve: 'Why does the United States pursue military nuclear advantages if the costs are so high? Is US policy... more
In The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, Matthew Kroenig presents the reader with a research puzzle he sets out to resolve: 'Why does the United States pursue military nuclear advantages if the costs are so high? Is US policy irrational? Or are these costs being exaggerated by the opponents of America's nuclear forces?' (2018: 190). His unambiguous answer is that American policy is not only rational but also virtuous to the extent that it has pursued nuclear superiority and pressed the advantages it confers in games of brinksmanship. Indeed, for all its rigorous application of positivist research methods, a normative commitment to nuclear primacy incontestably animates the book, counselling American leaders to seize the present opportunity to establish a new dominance in atomic weaponry. To our mind, Kroenig's empirical and normative case for nuclear hegemony is vitiated by a radically unempirical leap of faith that supposes nuclear actors to be consistently rational and that the world obeys that same rigid apodictic account of rationality, preserving us from the worst. In this review, we will endeavour to unpack the internal logic of the book's argument and show how that logic and the corresponding dismissal of the 'downsides' of nuclear superiority rely on ignoring the possibility that the world may be more chaotic and less predictable than Kroenig wants it to be.
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In Light It Up, John Pettegrew seeks to illuminate the crucial role that contemporary visual technologies and cultures occupy in the American capacity for 'force projection' in the early twenty-first century.