Impossible Subjects of Drone Warfare (Rupal Oza and Madiha Tahir)

<strong>CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE Jawaharlal Nehru University</strong> <strong>SEMINAR SERIES</strong> <strong>RUPAL OZA</strong> Associate Professor HUNTER COLLEGE, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK on <strong>Impossible Subjects of Drone Warfare (Rupal Oza and Madiha Tahir)</strong> <strong>Abstract : </strong>On October 11th 2013, Michael Toscano – then president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems (AUVSI), the largest drone lobby group in the United States – delivered a lecture at a conference held at New York University. Roughly two weeks later on October 29th, the family of Momina Bibi, a grandmother who was killed in a U.S. drone attack the year prior, testified before Congress. If for Toscano, the drone essentially represented a neutral technology, Momina Bibi's family spoke of a terrifying technology that had killed a beloved family member. The distance between the one event and the other exposes the fraught space behind the deceptively simple question: what is a drone? This paper takes up that question by way of a comparison of the worlds that each of these events construct. Operated from tens of thousands of miles away, drones have elicited public fascination, legal criticisms and justifications, and intense academic engagement. And yet, in the din of discourses, it is the voice of victims that have been attenuated. <strong>16 October 2015</strong> <strong>ABOUT THE SPEAKER:</strong> Rupal Oza is Associate Professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College, CUNY. Her first book, The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization was published in 2006 by Routledge, New York and by Women Unlimited, India. She is currently doing researching in Haryana examining the relationship between sexual assault, caste and land. <strong>ABOUT THE CO-AUTHOR:</strong> Madiha Tahir is a freelance journalist and doctoral student at Columbia University's School of Journalism. She has written extensively on conflict and politics in Pakistan. She is co-editor, along with Mahvish Ahmad, of Tanqeed – a magazine of politics and culture.