Within the anticipatory logics of Western state-based security, identification of the imminent threat is essential. Threat identification is increasingly reconfigured into the mechanism of a predictive, risk-oriented technoscience. However, the precision of sociotechnical systems for which preemptive technosecurity measures are oft-hailed for in the name of human security, is not materialized in their actual effects. Rendering Other bodies vulnerable, the idea of security as predictive technoscience turns the suspect/enemy into an anticipatory target that can be tracked and eliminated. It should be asked how force produces its translations from “person”, to “enemy”, to “target”.

Disputing the oft-stated claim about high technology making war inhuman, I argue that the resort to high technological innovations in warfare brings out new sides of the human. Rather than simply writing the human out of war, the arrival of “non-human” technologies actually challenge us to rethink the human in war. Therefore, the drone’s inseparability from the human must be explored. Furthermore, this calls for an inquiry on how one thinks about “bodies” in war; could there also be bodies of steel in addition to bodies of flesh.

For Elaine Scarry, the essence of humanity is most profoundly present when the human body is experiencing pain. By analyzing means introduced by Scarry in The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford University Press, 1985), I will explore how the institutionalization of the policy of targeted killing practiced by the United States through drone usage took place during the Obama administration (2009—2017). Furthermore, I will explore state-sponsored lethal force is trying to conceal the fact that, in essence, war is about the act of injuring another body. I argue that the enemy (or, at least, humanity of the enemy) is effaced in writing, whereas the (risky) body of the enemy is the only one rendered visible; a target. In contrast, the “un-risky” (Western) human being is the only one that matters and is rendered visible in writing, but is bodily treated with “visual dignity”.

I am a PhD Candidate in Political Science and, more specifically, World Politics at the University of Helsinki. My research has been granted a four-year funding by the Kone Foundation, one of the biggest independent non-profit organizations in Finland. From the beginning, my research approach has been multidisciplinary, situated in the field of Critical Security Studies. My dissertation explores the dynamics of state-sponsored systematic (lethal) violence in the context of the institutionalization of the United States policy of targeted killing and its use of drones in the territory of Pakistan. The deeper I have advanced in my research, my research focus has been sharpened towards feminist approach. Currently, I am exploring the ontology of the human in war, bodies in the context of war, and the politics of lethal force.

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