Unmanning studies the conditions that create unmanned platforms in the United States through a genealogy of experimental, pilotless planes flown between 1936 and 1992. Rather than treating the drone as a result of the war on terror, this book examines contemporary targeted killing through a series of failed experiments to develop unmanned flight in the twentieth century. These experiments are tied to histories of global control, cybernetics, racism and colonialism. Drone crashes and failures call attention to the significance of human action in making technopolitics that comes to be opposed to “man” and the paradoxes at their basis.

Contents
Introduction
1          DRONE
2          American Kamikaze
3          Unmanning
4          Buffalo Hunter
5          Pioneer
Conclusion      Nobody's Perfect
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Katherine Fehr Chandler is an assistant professor in the Culture and Politics Program at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. She received her PhD in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley.