Mil-bot Fetishism: The Pataphysics of Military Robots

Abstract

This paper begins by identifying a tendency in the mass media to represent military robotics in a manner that endows the devices with a degree of automation and agency that is actually beyond the technology. Military robot fetishism is not simply based upon an irrational or mistaken belief about the real capacities of the robots but, instead, their fetish value stems from their positive valuation according to a code of functionality (Baudrillard) that rests upon the risk-transfer labour of the robot. Acting as (Western) soldier surrogates, the promise of the military robot is one of casualty reduction but asymmetrically so. This fetishism arises, as Mulvey proposes, out of the difficulty of representing military reality— namely that waging war has not become a scientifically guided rational-antiseptic enterprise but continues to be a gruesome and violent activity. The fetishization of military robots can be attributed to the need to ameliorate a reality that is politically difficult for western governments and their militaries. In this context, military robotics becomes a science of imaginary technical solutions to the problem of war legitimation. The promotion of military robot fetishism in the mass media means that the military robot as fetish comes to circulate within both martial and civilian lifeworlds, re-legitimizing warfare and affording further militarization of civic life.

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