The Dynamics of Technological Spectacle in Billy Mitchell's Campaign for Aerial War

Rhetoric & Public Affairs Mar 2024

The Dynamics of Technological Spectacle in Billy Mitchell's Campaign for Aerial War

Benjamin Firgens

Abstract

Abstract This essay examines the first major American debate over aerial warfare as a case study in the relationship between visual spectacle and warfighting technologies. In the early 1920s, Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell mounted a short but intense advocacy campaign to win public approval for a standalone and fully supported air force. He justified his arguments with sanitized depictions of the warplane's idealized deployment. I call such depictions technological spectacles, and I parse their three hallmarks in Mitchell's advocacy: the dissociation of violence and destruction, the self-justification of technology, and the confusion of possibility for probability. I demonstrate that these habits of spectacle pervaded not only Mitchell's rhetoric but the coverage he received in the press. The essay establishes Mitchell as a key figure in the history of American rhetoric about military technology and, in the process, offers new historical context and critical vocabulary for diagnosing rhetorics of technological spectacle.

Journal: Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Published: 2024-03-01
DOI: 10.14321/rhetpublaffa.27.1.0027
Open Access: Closed
Topics: qualitative research artificial intelligence multilingual writers