REPRESENTATIONS OF VIOLENCE IN THE WAR ON TERROR

Question 1

Scopic regime

Answer 1

the idea that seeing is not just about biology but is culturally constructed

• Regime – some kind of framework/ system; frameworks through which we see
• Biology → goes to a larger cultural construction, what I see out of my eyes is culturally construted

Question 2

Our visual experiences are ________ – even constituted by technologies (photography, television, computers)

Answer 2

Our visual experiences are mediated – even constituted by technologies (photography, television, computers)

Question 3

It is not just that we see through technologies but that they construct a particular way of seeing

Answer 3

• The gaze can be understood as a type of scopic regime, enacted on an entire culture
• There is a cultural way of seeing the war, and we can look at how technologies of vision mediate war
• How the technologies of vision mediate war:
o Everything from photographs to drones to Banksy art

Question 4

Origin of term “War on Terror”

Answer 4

George Bush first use of the term War on Terror a few days after September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre twin towers
• One of the first visual artefacts: footage of the towers on loop

Question 5

War on terror – aka global war on terror

Answer 5

• Global military campaign to supposedly get rid of Alquada
• What counts as the war on terror gets murkier and murkier
• It is a problematic term and the way in which it has been visualized
• It has been mediated through an overwhelming array of visual forms and media, including photography, sculpture, painting, film, television, advertisements, cartoons, graphic novels, video games, and the internet
• Much of the war on terror is conducted covertly and remains out of sight, i.e. secret detention centres that are out of view and off-limits and no-fly zones that are essentially invisible
o No-fly zone → if you just looked up into the air, you can’t just see it
• Questions of borders, murky field when they are in the air
• Very asymmetrical in the ways the sides see each other, what technologies each has available to view the other and the ways I in which they can make themselves unseen

Question 6

What we don’t see is as important as what we do see.

Answer 6

i.e. CNN “Shock and Awe” The Beginning of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
• Focus on the sky vs the ground; waiting for airstrike
• Don’t see any civilians
• Really constructed gaze

Question 7

Drone vision and the overhead image

Answer 7

• One very particular type of image: the overhead image that we often see through drones
• This whole infrastructure not visible to the naked eye
• It produces a lot of images for us

Question 8

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) dominate recent conflicts

Answer 8

• The US Air Force uses UAVs (eg. drones) extensively in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere
• The proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles or drones means that remote aerial surveillance has allowed US to launch strikes on targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, with little risk to US soldiers
• The drones do not just hit military targets but they also kills civilian
• We have begun to see these images as they are declassified and as the US military has begun to post videos of drone attacks on YouTube
• Overhead things are a lot more obvious vs a reconnaissance spying

Question 9

Lisa Parks calls the images produced by these and other technologies _______

Answer 9

overhead images

Question 10

Overhead images

Answer 10

image-data that has been acquired by instruments onboard aircraft or satellites, downlinked to earth stations, and rendered or composited by software in order to represent, view, or analyze particular sites on earth
• make the world into a target, and can be understood as a symptom of the practice of power because they transform other countries into navigable digital domains
• Overhead images represent parts of the world as sites of scrutiny, destruction, and extraction
• Overhead images might reveal a site to monitor, destroy, or develop
• They transform the earth’s surface into a target of observation, conquest, development
• These images command the earth’s surface into military, visual power

Overhead images understood as part of the visualisation of war; it is as important as what we do see and what we don’t see

A cultural turn has emerged so that low-intensity warfare increasingly has a virtual and visual dimension

A central part of visual culture is visualizing things that are not visual

Question 11

War on Terror Examples:

Answer 11

Banksy → no one sees Guantanamo Bay

Youtube videos of American drone attacks