Lethal visions: the eye as function of the weapon

• In measure to the development of projectile weaponry, the conduct of modern war has accorded perception with destruction, marshalling and enfolding human vision into ever more sophisticated sociotechnical assemblages of targeting. Drawing upon Paul Virilio’s notion of a ‘logistics of perception’, this article charts the four successive orders of targeting constituted by the alignment of the line of sight with the line of fire (aiming), the measurement of distance to a target (ranging), the trailing and prediction of a target’s movement (tracking) and the directed navigation to a target’s position in space (guiding). Alongside the functional specification of each of these orders is concurrently drawn out the accompanying corporeal regimentations of the organisms thus imbricated. With its capillaries now spanning the wider ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, the contemporary war machine has however extended its sensorial reach far beyond the confines of its original human strictures. Its culmination may well lie in the advent of laser technology and the promise of a weaponisation of light itself through which the definitive coincidence of perception and annihilation is to be realised, even as it dispenses with the ocular orb.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Robotteknik och automation (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Robotics (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

Keyword

perception

targeting

aiming

tracking

laser

Virilio

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)