Air Power Archives

Keywords: archives, air power, drones, decolonizing war, geographical methods
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 4

Abstract

This paper draws from research I’ve conducted primarily at the UK National Archives on pilotless aircraft at the beginning of the 20th century. In particular, my work has focused on the development of the Larynx aircraft, an early weaponized drone that was tested extensively in the late 1920s, to better understand the long, interconnected histories of Western violence and modern scientific development that the contemporary drone emerges from. Here I reflect on my approach to the government-military archive, and the challenges and limitations it presents, through three main questions. First, what does a geographic approach to this archive look like? For me, attention to the ways that space was articulated and conceptualized in the material I engaged with in the archive led me to live-ammunition tests of the Larynx in Iraq. Second, and related, what does it meant to approach the archive through decolonial methods? I look at how we can incorporate efforts and commitments of decolonizing war (Barkawi, 2016) into our reading of military archives. Finally, how can we expand or supplement the government archive? Attention to silences of the state archive is crucial for a critical geographic approach, but I also look at the ways the historical archive might be reconstituted or extended – for example, reading popular and science fiction alongside the committee debates of the Pilotless Aircraft Committee – in the present.