Drones and Necropolitics; A Critical Discourse Analysis of Barack Obama’s Selected Speeches
Keywords:
Drones and Necropolitics, Barack Obama, SpeechesAbstract
The drone war can be seen as major outcome of 9/11 incident for the purpose of seeking out the terrorists who are thought to have found a safe haven in Pakistan. USA considers it necessary to wage war on enemies for its national security which is threatened by terrorists who are assumed to be resided in the Northwest area of Pakistan. The president Barack Obama mentioned that drone attack is lawful as it is aimed to kill the terrorists groups, however this lawful is never defined. It is still not known that who are the terrorists? From 2004 till now, thousands of innocent people has been killed, executed and exiled on the name of the terrorists. Using the framework of Van Dijk’s Discourse Analysis as Ideology Analysis and Mbembe’s Necropolitics, this paper argues that drone attacks though projecting itself to be concerned with the purpose of banishing terrorists, are constructing and deploying the discourse that situates the people of Waziristan as criminal subject. The discourse promoted by the USA is essential in understanding the ways in which the particular kind of subjectivities are being shaped through representing them as terrorists.
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