Description
This paper argues that drones are becoming compulsory fixtures in everyday life of (neo)liberal democracies in the Global North. To trace this argument, I examine the rise of drone education programs—UAV engineering and operating programs in US universities—and put forth the concept of “drone training” to articulate how the drone—as a technology and a process of subjectification—is transforming the desired form of the liberal subject. I have two objects of study: The programs’ marketing materials, which largely occur in engineering and robotics departments, and the press surrounding the annual Drone-Brain-Race at the University of Florida. The 'training' I describe is more than simply teaching students how to build and operate drones but the process that produces the normate subject of the drone age. My analysis is guided by conversations about compulsory able-bodiedness in Critical Disability Studies (McRuer 2006, 2018; Puar 2017; Kim 2017), which I use to understand how the discourse around drone technology in US higher education implicates the values of human ability and passivity. This article develops Critical Drone Studies by arguing that disability is central to understanding drone technology’s role in militarization subjects that are supposedly ‘safe’ from drones by living in the heart of empire.
