[ecrea] CFP: Re-conceptualizing Cultures of Remote Warfare

/CFP: Re-conceptualizing Cultures of Remote Warfare / /Special Issue of
/The Journal of War and Culture Studies/

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? We 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, we 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 /at/ umbc.edu) <mailto:(adelman /at/ umbc.edu)>) and David Kieran
((dkieran /at/ washjeff.edu) <mailto:(dkieran /at/ 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.  We also welcome queries in
advance.

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