Christophe Wasinski

The Formation of the ‘Western’ Strategic Gaze: A Case Study on Emotional Irrelevance in International Politics

Why and how did a cartographic narrative emerge, which makes empathic emotions irrelevant, encourages resorting to violence, symbolically transforms ‘own troops’ into reified entities that can be sacrificed, and, in general, facilitates war-waging? The analysis of material factors (be they military manpower, defense budgets, and/or weapons available in armed forces’ arsenals) and/or of balances of power is not sufficient to decipher this puzzle. In order to understand war, it is necessary to take into account the existence of social representations, especially those contributing to hush up ‘positive’ (empathic) emotions toward the Other. Using a sociological historical approach inspired by Science and Technology Studies, this chapter aims at exploring the social forces that allowed such dehumanizing representations, thereby making emotions largely irrelevant, to succeed and circulate transnationally in Europe for centuries.

When the war machine produces its enemies: making sense of the Afghan situation through British airpower

ABSTRACT How is the protracted and non-decisive Afghan conflict understood by the British military personnel in charge of air support? Based on a study of autobiographical sources and relying on Bruno Latour’s anthropological work, this article argues that personnel produce a specific self-justificatory culture based on what can be achieved by the technologies (ammunition, weapons, aircraft) used. This article highlights how technologies become an ‘actant’, influencing the way air personnel elaborate representations of their role and their enemies. More specifically, this analysis underlines how airpower technologies contribute to the framing of Others as depoliticized enemies (i.e. targets) to be destroyed by machines. Machines and weapons are not neutral instruments but rather devices that participate in the normalization of the use of force.