Human Rights in the Age of Drones: Critical Perspectives on Post-9/11 Literature, Film and Art (Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3032081904 ISBN 13: 9783032081902

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2026

Synopsis

This book examines drone warfare – primarily understood now as an issue of technology, military strategy, and law – through popular cultural forms: fiction, film, drama, theater, art, performance, and dance. Drawing on theoretical work from the fields of culture and human rights, and examining existing critiques of drones, this volume demonstrates how powerful – predominantly western – states engage in a double violence when they deploy a remotely controlled weapon, one which both kills the victim and dehumanizes them as a threat, a terrorist, or a racialized other. Through close readings and analysis of cultural representations of drones, and situating them in their political and historical contexts, the essays make transparent the vocabulary of human rights work, and spotlight critical questions, contradictions and political agendas which surround the remotely controlled technologies of violence.

About this title

About the Author

Muhammad Waqar Azeem is an Adjunct Lecturer at State University of New York, Binghamton, US where he also completed his PhD in English as a Fulbright fellow (2014-19).

 

From the Back Cover

This book examines drone warfare – primarily understood now as an issue of technology, military strategy, and law – through popular cultural forms: fiction, film, drama, theater, art, performance, and dance. Drawing on theoretical work from the fields of culture and human rights, and examining existing critiques of drones, this volume demonstrates how powerful – predominantly western – states engage in a double violence when they deploy a remotely controlled weapon, one which both kills the victim and dehumanizes them as a threat, a terrorist, or a racialized other. Through close readings and analysis of cultural representations of drones, and situating them in their political and historical contexts, the essays make transparent the vocabulary of human rights work, and spotlight critical questions, contradictions and political agendas which surround the remotely controlled technologies of violence.

Muhammad Waqar Azeem is an Adjunct Lecturer at State University of New York, Binghamton, US where he also completed his PhD in English as a Fulbright fellow (2014-19).

 

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3032081904
• ISBN 13: 9783032081902
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 278
• Editor: Azeem Muhammad Waqar