We are now into the second century in which aerial warfare is commonplace in a range of forms, and the second decade in which drone warfare is routinized. As paradigm, strategy, and tactic, violence-at-a-distance has become a predominant model of military engagement. Even a partial list of its manifestations reveals its reach and diversification: the initial use of weaponized aircraft during the First World War; the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War; the firebombing of Tokyo during the Second World War; Richard Nixon’s efforts to use sustained bombing to compel negotiations during the Vietnam War; the ‘smart bombs’ fetishized during the 1991 Persian Gulf War; and the embrace of drones as the solution to the challenges posed by the twenty-first century’s non-linear and unbounded battlefield. War at a distance requires, and prompts the development of, new types of weapons, including the atom bomb, the Minuteman Missile, Napalm, Cruise missiles, and the Predator and Reaper drones. The significance of these inventions, and their casualties, extends beyond the historical and political frames, resonating into the domains of environment, ethics, and culture.
Activists, artists, and scholars across the humanities and social sciences have taken these forms of warfare as objects of criticism, inspiration, and study. Beyond the rehash of now-familiar critiques of remote warfare and its potential for dehumanization and indiscriminate lethality, however, what is left to be said? The editors invite essays for a themed special issue of The Journal of War and Culture Studies that develop new, more substantive and productive ways of thinking about remoteness in warfare by opening up uncharted critical spaces in which to reflect on it and, more specifically, its cultural origins, consequences, and enmeshments.
Among the questions that this issue will explore are: What are the cultural preconditions for remote warfare? How does remote warfare transform the cultures that engage in, and suffer under, it? What sites of cultural production capture or obscure the experiences of remote warfare’s perpetrators and casualties? How do producers of culture understand their obligations during remote wartime, and what roles do audiences and spectators play in these exchanges? How might cultural productions enable or critique this violence? Articles for this special issue may pursue answers to these questions by illuminating overlooked histories and cultural products, developing methodologies suited to studying these issues, identifying conceptual frameworks that need to evolve to keep pace with new developments, making ethical claims, or clarifying the role of theory in times of remote warfare. Given the centrality of U.S. doctrine, technologies, and conflicts in the propagation of remote warfare, the editors are especially, but not exclusively, interested in articles that consider these issues in an American context, broadly construed.
This special issue of the Journal of War and Culture Studies will appear in 2018 – a moment that marks the fifteenth anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the fiftieth anniversary of the final months of Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam. These anniversaries create timely opportunities for reconsidering remote warfare, and tracing both historical continuities and disjunctures. JWACS emphasizes the critical study of connections between warfare and cultural production, broadly construed to encompass the arts, all forms of popular culture, journalism, documentary, institutional media, and more. Successful abstracts will clearly indicate how the proposed paper contributes to the overall project of the journal and the objectives of the special issue.
To propose an article for inclusion in this special issue, please submit a 500-word abstract and a 2-page CV to its editors, Rebecca A. Adelman (adelman@umbc.edu) and David Kieran (dkieran@washjeff.edu), by May 15, 2016 for a decision by early June. Draft manuscripts will be due January 15, 2017, and final manuscripts on June 1, 2017. The editors also welcome queries in advance.