Flight accidents in the 21st Century U.S. Air Force : the facts of 40 non-combat events
- Submitting institution
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Kingston University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32-15-1663
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- McFarland
- ISBN
- 9781476674025
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
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- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Flight Accidents in the 21st Century U.S. Air Force is a monograph by photography theorist Henry Bond. In the book, Bond brings together and analyses for the first time 40 accidents that took place between 2003 and 2016 at U.S. Air Force (USAF) bases around the world. The aim of the book is to investigate the feasibility of a “Museum of Accidents” –a concept proposed by the French critical theorist Paul Virilio as a critique of the machine. Bond identified the accidents presented in the book through long-term research into the popular press as well as specialist publications, such as The Aviation Times. Furthermore, he gained access to technical information and detailed descriptions of the accidents by liaising with U.S. Air Force departments and units (e.g. Andersen Air Force Base), through Freedom of Information requests. In addition, the book’s intellectual approach was informed by research into publications analysing the U.S. military-industrial complex, and key texts of critical theory beyond Virilio, including works by Jean Baudrillard and Noam Chomsky. Through the book, Bond proposes a distinct materialisation of Virilio’s philosophical concept of a “Museum of Accidents”, which reveals Western culture’s attitude towards accidents as events that disrupt collective faith in technology and the linearity of progress. In this way, images of catastrophe may be reconceptualised as images of revelation –both culturally and on a practical level–through the translation of highly technical accident reports into ‘plain English’. This is particularly evident in the case of the book’s systematic rephrasing of USAF-specific acronyms and jargon, which enables the non-specialist to access the narratives of the reports and decode the images that accompany them. As a result, the book expands the dominant understanding of U.S. military power through an unconventional lens on events that normally remain obscure and repressed.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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