The proliferation of peripheries: Militarized drones and the reconfiguration of global space

Abstract

By situating drones in a lineage of colonial technologies of pacification, the critical literature on militarized drones suggests a revised concept of peripheries and global space. This paper engages this literature to argue for a conception of peripheries as spaces of colonial state power at multiple scales. It does so by arguing for a distinction between proliferation to the global periphery and the proliferation of peripheries at multiple scales and across scattered sites. The paper also draws on Gramsci and Fanon to elaborate an internationalist anticolonial position on the defense of territorial sovereignty of states in the global periphery.