Imagining spectral violence
On morality and meaning in the cyber-nuclear age
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4481753 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Caroline Holmqvist (0000-0002-7119-6253, Swedish Defence University, corresponding author), Ernst Schwarz (0000-0001-9642-733X, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University London, UK) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 189 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 70-89 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Thesis Eleven (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/07255136251353240 |
| OpenAlex | W4412641860 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
This article is about our relationship to two lethal technologies that blow the mind: nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence - and their mutual imbrication. Our diagnosis is that we are missing an ethical critique adequate to the (emergent/resurgent) technologies of mass destruction. In particular, we are dissatisfied with the persistence and dominance of algorithmic reasoning and/in contemporary just war theory, manifest in deterrence theory. We argue that such approaches fail to take into account the intrinsically human capacity to exercise moral judgement and the quintessential human-ness of ethical relations. In response to deprivation of ethics as algorithmic thinking, we summon a distinctly human quality - the imagination - and argue that it is pivotal to exploding the conceptual categories that hamper 'ethical' theorising. Imagining the Apocalypse is not the answer; imagining otherwise is. With this in mind, we foreground the imagination as vital to ethical reasoning and political critique
Criminology · Epistemology · Meaning (existential · Morality · Sociology · Global Security and Public Health · Nuclear Issues and Defense · Philosophy · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Experiments in Ethics
Just and Unjust Wars
War's Logic
The Cybernetics Moment
Imagining God
Modern Science and Authoritarianism
No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives)
Appetite for destruction
Technology and moral vacuums in just war theorising
Kill anything that moves
Narrative and nuclear weapons politics
The role of artificial intelligence in nuclear crisis decision making
Should AI stay or should AI go? First strike incentives & deterrence stability
War, ‘strategic communication’ and the violence of non-recognition
The Tragedy Trap
The Ethics of Choosing Deterrence
Nuclear weapons, existentialism, and International Relations
Nuclear existentialism
Nuclear weapons, extinction, and the Anthropocene
Heartfelt truths
History in Financial Times
The ‘standardization of catastrophe
Invention and uninvention in nuclear weapons politics
A contestation of nuclear ontologies
Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |