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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Targeting the ontology of war
T2 - from Clausewitz to Baudrillard
AU - Nordin, Astrid
AU - Öberg, Dan
N1 - This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).
PY - 2015/1/15
Y1 - 2015/1/15
N2 - Against a surprising level of agreement between Clausewitz, contemporary military doctrines and critical war studies on an ontology of war as fighting, we suggest that the study of contemporary warfare needs to focus more on war as processing. Through Jean Baudrillard we argue that at least some of what is referred to as ‘war’ is no longer characterised by encounters through fighting. We exemplify our argument by how the repetitive battle-rhythm of military targeting strives for perfect war. What remains is not war as an object in itself, but a reified ‘war’ that obscures the disappearance of that very object. The debate on war contributes to the reification of such a war, as an imperative telling us: ‘we have a concept, you must learn to think through it’.
AB - Against a surprising level of agreement between Clausewitz, contemporary military doctrines and critical war studies on an ontology of war as fighting, we suggest that the study of contemporary warfare needs to focus more on war as processing. Through Jean Baudrillard we argue that at least some of what is referred to as ‘war’ is no longer characterised by encounters through fighting. We exemplify our argument by how the repetitive battle-rhythm of military targeting strives for perfect war. What remains is not war as an object in itself, but a reified ‘war’ that obscures the disappearance of that very object. The debate on war contributes to the reification of such a war, as an imperative telling us: ‘we have a concept, you must learn to think through it’.
KW - ontology of war
KW - critical war studies
KW - Baudrillard
KW - disappearance
KW - targeting
KW - warfare
KW - Clausewitz
U2 - 10.1177/0305829814552435
DO - 10.1177/0305829814552435
M3 - Journal article
VL - 43
SP - 392
EP - 419
JO - Millennium : Journal of International Studies
JF - Millennium : Journal of International Studies
SN - 0305-8298
IS - 2
ER -