Breathless war: martial bodies, aerial experiences and the atmospheres of empire
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231153259 |
| Author | Italo Brandimarte |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231153259
European Journal of
International Relations
2023, Vol. 29(3) 525 –552
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661231153259
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JR
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Breathless war: martial bodies,
aerial experiences and the
atmospheres of empire
Italo Brandimarte
University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
Following a widespread fascination with drones, the materiality of aerial warfare –
its bodies, embodied experiences, technologies – has received increasing attention
in International Relations (IR) scholarship. This article pushes for a deeper, political
theorisation of air in the study of war in its material and embodied dimensions through
a critical reading of the Abyssinian War (1935–1936) – a central yet largely neglected
conflict in the colonial history of world politics. Exploring the joint deployment of
aeroplanes and mustard gas in Ethiopia via a mosaic of sources – literature, strategic
thought, cartoons and memoirs – I argue that aerial relations expose the production of
a racialised global order underpinned by more-than-human war experiences. Bringing
together geographer Derek McCormack’s concept of ‘envelopment’ and Black Studies
scholar Christina Sharpe’s idea of ‘the weather’, I show how Italy’s imperial desires
– and their international perceptions – cannot be theorised in separation from aerial
experiences that are conceived as excessive of human bodies, sensing and imagination.
This analysis thus makes two central contributions to the critical study of war in IR.
First, an aerial reading of the Abyssinian War highlights the political importance of
war experience beyond the human. Second, it challenges studies of drone warfare that
reduce discussions of air to either the strategic, technical and ontological plane or
to the intimate, embodied and phenomenological one. Instead, the more-than-human
aerial experiences of the Abyssinian War call for a theorisation of air as both material
and affective, technical and embodied, and grand strategic and intimate.
Keywords
Critical security studies, conflict, empire, racism, critical theory, fascism
Corresponding author:
Italo Brandimarte, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, Alison Richard
Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP, UK.
Email: ib449@cam.ac.uk
1153259EJT0010.1177/13540661231153259European Journal of International RelationsBrandimarte
research-article2023
Article
526 European Journal of International Relations 29(3)
Our aim was mild and gracious,
We dropped from heaven above
Our gift to the rapacious
And taught them ways of love.
Their rude resistance shattered,
They warmly grasp the hand
Of those who ploughed and scattered,
The good seed on the land.
Not dreamers nor Utopian,
We soon expect to see
The swart-skinned Ethiopian
As white-souled as are we;
And if the unwary scholar
Continues to be crass
In education’s collar
We mean to give him gas. [. . .]
(Evoe. ‘The Soft Answer’. Punch, 8 July 1936)
We believe in the possibility of an incalculable number of human transformations, and we say
without smiling that wings sleep in the flesh of man.
(Filippo Tommaso Marinetti)
Introduction
In a telegram sent to Italian General Rodolfo Graziani on 27 October 1935, Benito
Mussolini authorised gas bombings on the battlefields of Ethiopia ‘as a last resort to
defeat enemy resistance’1 (Del Boca, 2007 [1996]: 38) and make of it a new, long-cov-
eted colony. This deliberation turned the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936) – also
known as the Abyssinian War – into a crucial moment in the history of world politics and
Western warfare, albeit one that stays underestimated in International Relations (IR)
scholarship. Careless about the authority of the League of Nations, Italy was preserving
its role of air power pioneer – conquered in 1911 Libya, with the first ever offensive use
of aeroplanes (Kaplan, 2018: 140–141) – through the combined and systematic deploy-
ment of two novel airborne weapons: the aeroplane and mustard gas. In its chilling
uniqueness, the Abyssinian War violently marked an epoch where imperial dominance is
achieved through the weaponisation of air (see Bell, 2020: 229–236, 345–348; Kaplan,
2018) – one that is still far from over.
This paper investigates the case of the Abyssinian War as a politically important
moment in the history of aerial warfare, Western imperialism and modern international
politics to explore how it can inform the critical study of war. Looking at a mosaic of
sources – including literature, strategic thought, cartoons and memoirs – I argue that
attending to aerial processes and relations reveals how the martial production of racial-
ised global orders is underpinned by more-than-human war experiences. Bringing
together geographer Derek McCormack’s concept of ‘envelopment’ and Black Studies
scholar Christina Sharpe’s idea of ‘the weather’, I show how Italy’s imperial
desires – and their international perceptions – cannot be theorised in separation from
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