Drones, Swarms and Becoming-Insect

Feminist Utopias and Posthuman Politics

Bibliographic Data

ID3947045
AuthorsLauren Wilcox (0000-0001-6598-1733, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume116
Issue1
Pages25-45
Publication date2017-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/s41305-017-0071-x
OpenAlexW2607216264
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited35

Insects and 'the swarm' as metaphors and objects of research have inspired works in the genres of science fiction and horror; social and political theorists; and the development of war-fighting technologies such as 'drone swarms', which function as robot/insect hybrids. Contemporary developments suggest that the future of warfare will not be 'robots' as technological, individualised substitutions for idealised (masculine) warfighters, but warfighters understood as swarms: insect metaphors for non-centrally organised problem-solvers that will become technologies of racialisation. As such, contemporary feminist analysis requires an analysis of the politics of life and death in the insect and the swarm, which, following Braidotti (2002), cannot be assumed to be a mere metaphor or representation of political life, but an animating materialist logic. The swarm is not only a metaphor but also a central mode of biopolitical and necropolitical war, with the 'terrorist' enemy represented as swarmlike as well. In analysing the relations of assemblage and antagonism in the war ontologies of the drone swarm, I seek inspiration from what Hayles (1999, p. 47) describes as a double vision that 'looks simultaneously at the power of simulation and at the materialities that produce it'. I discuss various representations and manifestations of swarms and insect life in science/speculative fiction, from various presentations of the 'Borg' in Star Trek (1987-1994, 1995-2001, 1996), Alien (1979) and The Fly (1958, 1986) to more positive representations of the 'becoming-insect' as possible feminist Utopia in Gilman's Herland (2015 [1915]) and Tiptree's Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1989 [1976]). Posthuman warfare also contains the possibilities of both appropriating and rewriting antagonisms of masculine and feminine in the embodiment of the subject of war in the swarm. This piece seeks to analyse new ways of feminist theorising of the relations of power and violence in the embodiment of war as the swarm

Aesthetics · Assemblage (archaeology · Biology · Drone · Epistemology · Materialism · Metaphor · Political science · Politics · Posthuman · Sociology · Utopia · Ecology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction

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