Drone affective politics against state impunity: The case of 43 disappeared students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico

Abstract

This article analyzes some implications of new drone aesthetics involved in affective politics against state impunity in social conflicts. Whereas the literature on media, war and conflict has been centered around the war aesthetics of military drones, the author argues that civilian drones can mobilize affective politics – expressed, for example, in the aestheticization of shame, rage and the subversion of fear – as a means of political communication with and against the state. Further, she proposes that the present focus on drone aesthetics should be expanded to also account for the political affects that aesthetic sensory perceptions mobilize. Drawing on actor-network theory and new materialism, the article takes the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa (Mexico) as an exemplary case of state impunity in the context of the war against drugs and social conflict. By means of a digital ethnography of the social collective project Rexiste, the author analyzes its public interventions deploying a civil drone named ‘Droncita’, which sought to generate an aesthetics of affect against state impunity. The article contributes toward expanding investigation of (civilian) drone aesthetics and the mobilization of affective politics in the literature on war and social conflicts and collective action.