Affectivity, Biopolitics and the Virtual Reality of War

Abstract

At the focal point of contemporary biopolitical knowledge and power is human life in its contingent, evolutionary and emergent properties: the living as adaptive and affective beings, characterized in particular by their capacity to experience stress and fear that works together with vital survival mechanisms. This article addresses new techniques of psychiatric power and therapeutic epistemologies that have emerged in present-day military-scientific as well as media technological assemblages to define and capture the human in its psychobiological states of emergency. Specifically, the focus of this article is on one special kind of screen medium, called Virtual Iraq, a virtual reality device designed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder among war veterans. The article analyses Virtual Iraq as an example of new forms and strategies for the management of affectivity and memory that have been developed in conjunction with contemporary neuroscientific discourses on the evolutionary origins of emotional life and its neurobiological functionality among humans qua species. Furthermore, it discusses Virtual Iraq as an example of the biopolitical work of contemporary screen media in which the reality of images starts to concern the organism’s internal functioning instead of being anthropological or communicative, tapping into the brain’s capacity of self-organization as well as contributing to the production and maintenance of psychological immunity.

Screen Trauma: Visual Media and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

“…The videogame repeats, both in content and form, elements from a drone mission, albeit with the relief of 'game over' with no casualties. In this, operators intuitively exercise principles of exposure therapy, the most advanced techniques of which employ virtual reality technology to recreate the traumatic scene (see Va¨liaho, 2012).…”

“…To begin with, trauma literature is replete with media metaphors: traumatic imprint, unprocessed memory, unconscious registration, flashbacks, intrusive images, and transmission of trauma. Media are sometimes employed in PTSD treatment: in one method the patient is recorded recounting the traumatic story, and is then asked to listen repeatedly to the recording so as to desensitize herself (Foa and Rothbaum, 2001); another method employs video recording to capture the traumatic story, which is then analyzed together with the patient (Greenwald et al, 2006); and virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) simulates the traumatic experience using visual immersion technology as part of a repeated exposure treatment program (Va¨liaho, 2012). What these methods invoke, and indeed draw on, is the structural similarity between the repetition compulsion of trauma and the technological reproduction of media (see Pinchevski, 2012).…”

‘Y’all need to hide your kids, hide your wife’: Mobile applications, risk and sex offender databases

“…I use the word 'preempting' and, in doing so, acknowledge the recent thinking of Pasi Valiaho (2014) whose work on the visual economy of computer games provides a timely intervention into ongoing critiques of neo-liberal politics and their global consequences. Valiahlo positions the screen of the computer game (though arguably other data screens are relevant here) as articulating a simulated future.…”

“…For Valiahlo, the computer game not only connects with this anticipatory dimension of our minds but also with the social. The visual economy of the computer game parallels discourses prevalent in Western neo-liberal foreign policy; 'preemption has become a catchword that captures much of what is happening at the moment within the realms of both politics and economy' (Valiaho, 2014). Valiahlo uses the example of USAF drone aircraft to identify how the rhetoric of preemptive air strikes against suspected terrorist cells in foreign lands can be seen as echoing other forms of preemptive decision-making found elsewhere in contemporary culture.…”

“…RSO applications must be understood within the landscape(s) of risk aversion and risk identification identified by scholars such as Douglas and Wildavsky (1983), Beck (1992), Edgley and Brisset (1995), Lash (2000) and Valiaho (2014). They must also be understood within the context of ongoing sex offender research, which identifies the continued support among local communities for notification systems that allow for 'the public disclosure of information about registered sex offenders' (Levenson et al, 2007: 2).…”