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Caren Kaplan's Aerial Aftermaths is the leading work in an important new crossover field between visual studies, science and technology studies, and critical theory of geography. Not since Anne Friedberg's The Virtual Window have we seen such a richly researched and theorized media archaeology of technologies of visuality. This is the account of `objective' seeing from above that critical technoscience studies readers have been waiting for since Donna Haraway held forth against this ocular `God trick' almost thirty years ago. Kaplan's book comes at a time when we urgently need the kind of historical insight she offers about the geopolitical and military technologics that inform the myriad contemporary global systems through which surveillance and control are enforced. -- Lisa Cartwright, coauthor of * Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture * Caren Kaplan's Aerial Aftermaths is a brilliant and wide-ranging examination of aerial ways of seeing and the history of the technologies employed when it comes to representing that which can be observed from on high. From the exploits of early aeronauts, military mapping, and what is seen and sensed through panoramic paintings to aerial surveying as a means of colonial governance and more, Kaplan's absorbing analysis is unmatched in its depth. With far-reaching implications for the study of visual culture and, crucially, how we interrogate the violence of drones and remote warfare, Aerial Aftermaths is essential reading. -- Simone Browne, author of * Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness *

Caren Kaplan's Aerial Aftermaths is a brilliant and wide-ranging examination of aerial ways of seeing and the history of the technologies employed when it comes to representing that which can be observed from on high. From the exploits of early aeronauts, military mapping, and what is seen and sensed through panoramic paintings to aerial surveying as a means of colonial governance and more, Kaplan's absorbing analysis is unmatched in its depth. With far-reaching implications for the study of visual culture and, crucially, how we interrogate the violence of drones and remote warfare, Aerial Aftermaths is essential reading. -- Simone Browne, author of Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness Caren Kaplan's Aerial Aftermaths is the leading work in an important new crossover field between visual studies, science and technology studies, and critical theory of geography. Not since Anne Friedberg's The Virtual Window have we seen such a richly researched and theorized media archaeology of technologies of visuality. This is the account of 'objective' seeing from above that critical technoscience studies readers have been waiting for since Donna Haraway held forth against this ocular 'God trick' almost thirty years ago. Kaplan's book comes at a time when we urgently need the kind of historical insight she offers about the geopolitical and military technologics that inform the myriad contemporary global systems through which surveillance and control are enforced. -- Lisa Cartwright, coauthor of Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture

""Kaplan challenges the assessment that the view from above must always entail power and control, though that’s often the purpose of this perspective. . . . As Kaplan shows, the view from above can be appropriated by artists and activists to challenge military claims and call attention to the suffering on the ground. She herself takes a view from higher above to critique drone warfare."" -- Jason Pearl * Public Books * ""[A] fascinating history which [Kaplan] illustrates with well-chosen images sprinkled throughout the text. She shows that while the aerial perspective is far from new, contemporary viewers almost always find it fresh and consider the view from the heavens to be particularly revealing."" -- Neta C. Crawford * H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews * ""An intelligent, engaging tour‑de‑force bringing into conversation with one another a variety of different media, images and texts, and persuading the readers through its thoughtful reconstruction and deconstruction of historical instances of all‑encompassing vision to learn something even about the unconscious ways they may view the world themselves."" -- Laleh Khalili * New Americanist * ""Caren Kaplan’s brilliant new Aerial Aftermaths is full of quotable material . . . The author is clear that she wants to interrogate the kind of thinking that makes for grand narratives. And we are better for it. Kaplan’s deconstruction of such narratives is necessarily interdisciplinary, as she impressively reads across a host of literatures in geography, history, American studies and technology/media studies, but it is especially noteworthy for bringing art historians and critics into the fold. She nimbly reads images against the grain, finding the gaps and absences and filling them with historical and critical insight."" -- Timothy Barney * Imago Mundi * ""Kaplan’s erudition and deep thought emerge from every page, and her prose is as purposeful and potent as one would expect from a Duke monograph. Aerial Aftermaths is a powerful, timely and elegantly crafted book that shrewdly subverts the optics of war."" -- Peter Hobbins * Cultural Studies Review * ""Kaplan troubles both the conventional wisdom that vision from above results in the immediately legible and its opposite: that vision from above evacuates the possibility of what we can see. She compels her reader to consider the violence 'always already inherent in both desires.'""   -- Jennifer Kelly * Radical History Review * ""A historically astute account of becoming-aerial, Kaplan’s text is a valuable, careful and nuanced contribution to a wider collection of aerially attentive interventions."" -- Anna Jackman * Postcolonial Studies * ""Anyone with an interest in state power, surveillance, drone theory or technology, the history of colonialism, art history, military history, or the history of visual culture would find this study enriching and challenging."" -- Grace Aldridge Foster * Journal of Cinema and Media Studies * ""[A] sweeping, richly illustrated work on the uses of aerial views in wartime aftermaths."" -- Blair Stein * Technology and Culture * “Bringing together mapping, photography, war, and the interrogation of the aerial view, Kaplan’s engaged study Aerial Aftermaths underscores the significance of that view to contemporary visual culture. Moreover, Kaplan links this account to an established critique of cartography as a form of power and more particularly an engagement with Western control over non-Western landscapes and peoples.” -- Jeremy Black * American Historical Review *

[A] fascinating history which [Kaplan] illustrates with well-chosen images sprinkled throughout the text. She shows that while the aerial perspective is far from new, contemporary viewers almost always find it fresh and consider the view from the heavens to be particularly revealing. -- Neta C. Crawford * H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews * Kaplan challenges the assessment that the view from above must always entail power and control, though that's often the purpose of this perspective. . . . As Kaplan shows, the view from above can be appropriated by artists and activists to challenge military claims and call attention to the suffering on the ground. She herself takes a view from higher above to critique drone warfare. -- Jason Pearl * Public Books *

Author Information

Caren Kaplan is Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Davis, and the author and editor of several books including Life in the Age of Drone Warfare, also published by Duke University Press.

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