The Image of the Other as a Mirror Image of the Self. The Representation of Islamic Terrorists in the French Air Force

The air forces have played a central role in the practice of most recent Western wars, in particular Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011). Whereas the technical aspects of modern aerial warfare have been comprehensively documented, we know little about the ideational dimension of this practice, and about the nexus between those technical aspects and the representation of war. This paper aims at shedding some light on this blind-spot by investigating how Western contemporary airmen represent their enemies. The paper, based on fifty semi-structured interviews with French fighter jet pilots, argues, first, that the pilots’ mental maps are dominated (unsurprisingly) by an Orientalist image of the “Islamic terrorist” where the latter appears as a mirror image of the modern (fighter jet) pilot. The paper reviews the ideas and materialities which fashion this particular and performative imaginary.