The deployment of remotely piloted air platforms - or drones - has become a defining feature of contemporary counter-insurgency operations. Scholarly analysis and public debate primarily focuses on two issues: the legality of targeted killing and whether the practice is effective at disrupting insurgency networks, and the intensive media and activist scrutiny of the policy processes through which targeted killing decisions are made. While this book will contribute to these ongoing discussions, the aim of the analysis is to demonstrate how the current social relations prevalent in liberal societies contain the potential for targeted killing as a normal rather than extraordinary practice.

Chapter One: The Cultural Politics of the Targeted Killing Assemblage

Chapter Two: Beyond the Exception: The Legal Problematisation of Targeted Killing

Chapter Three: The Politics of Targeted Killing

Chapter Four: Science, Capitalism, and the RPA

Chapter Five: The Aesthetic Subjects of Targeted Killing

Chapter Six: The Quotidian Geopolitics of Targeted Killing Strikes

Chapter Seven: Concluding Remarks on the Cultural Politics of Targeted Killing

Kyle Grayson is a senior lecturer in international politics at Newcastle University, UK. His research interests are in the areas of political violence, security, culture, identity, and critical social theory. He is the author of Chasing Dragons: Security, Identity, and Illicit Drugs in Canada (2008).