Gender and Drone Warfare

'Drone technology is not only shaping the nature of warfare but also the perceived nature of the soldier, as Clark [...] explores in this book. Being distant from the battlefield, drone pilots are not in immediate physical danger, which has the perceived effect of feminizing their warrior status. However, by combining the methodology of "haunting" (drawing on Jacques Derrida’s notion of "hauntology": paying attention to unseen spaces, non-linearity, and intuitions) with Cynthia Weber’s queer logics, Clark argues that the pilot’s experiences actually exceed the masculine/feminine binary and disrupt traditional gendered understandings of warfare. Clark clearly lays out the applicability of both methodological frameworks, illustrating each with narrative examples. Hauntology, for instance, "discomforts" the interwoven binaries surrounding issues of complex personhood, ruptured and distorted temporalities, power, and in/(hyper)visibility. Queer logic, meanwhile, allows for the coexistence of opposing "sides," such as the drone pilot being simultaneously present and far from the battlefield. A solid contribution to the "Routledge Studies in Gender and Security" series, this text provides a novel theoretical model with larger implications for feminist security studies. umming Up: Recommended. Graduate students and faculty.'--S. J. Shaw, Antioch University, CHOICE