Drones deactivate democratic war critique by removing citizens’ exposure to death.

Evidence

This citizenship of exposable lives has constituted an important—albeit not the sole—basis for a democratic critique of the power to wage war, not only in the institutional manner forecast by Kant, namely suffrage, but also as a vector of extraparliamentary mobilization in the antiwar movements of the twentieth century, However, the dronization of the armed forces, inasmuch as it reduces the military exposure of national lives to zero, tends to somewhat deactivate that critical attitude. It would nevertheless be a mistake to believe that an “aversion to losses” is the only possible motive and the cost/benefit calculation the only relevant rationality for the development of a critical voice in the face of state violence. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 575

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s core question: how drone technology transformed the psychic-moral-political space of war. — connects to: Drone warfare creates a new ethical-political norm neither war nor peace; Drone technology erodes the soldier’s defining scorn of death.; Drone warfare deactivates the democratic critique rooted in exposable lives (+12 more)
• QUESTION: Author flags but doesn’t develop what alternative rationalities, beyond loss-aversion, could sustain critical voice under drones.
• SEED: Angle: what moral vocabulary survives in a citizenry immunized from war’s costs but still bound to wage it.

Broader Connections

• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. #corroborates (0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 125
• Protecting national lives through drones increases their social precariousness. #expands (0.70) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 607
• Drones fuse killing and caring into an integrated humilitarian power #complicates (0.60)