Weapons, Bodies, and Acts of Killing

Abstract

This chapter studies the relationships between weapons, their users, and their targets. Drawing on the micro-sociology of Randall Collins, it argues that human reluctance toward wounding and killing complicates the role of weapons. At the same time, wounding and killing remains an essential part of the meaning and attraction of weapons. Using Theodor W. Adorno's concept of the addendum and Julia Kristeva's theory of the abject, this chapter explores how discourses on weapons create ‘safe spaces’ to shield the users of weapons from their effects on human bodies. Placing the meaning of weapons within ‘safe’ political or cultural frameworks avoids direct human confrontation with the actual purpose of weapons: to destroy human infrastructure, to wound or kill. This chapter argues that wounding and killing is a micro-physical activity and an intense confrontational human act, while weapons are justified and used within political infrastructures. Discursive structures on the (political) justification and use of weapons conceal the act of killing. Two case studies illustrate how this avoidance, silencing, or numbing of the act of killing is inherent in discourses on weapons which negotiates the meaning of weapons: NRA discourses in the U.S., which frame gun ownership as a tool of personal development toward national identity, and discourses on FPV drone warfare in Ukraine, which frame war as a technical issue with no (killed or killable) human bodies involved. Both cases show how weapon discourses often conceal the human cost of violence while emphasizing weapons’ social, technical, and political significance.