Atmospheric politics: protest drones and the ambiguity of airspace

This article addresses the emergence of a particular assemblage—the adoption of sUAS or small drones by subjects with different interests grouped in the same location: journalists, protestors, and police. Considering the use of sUAS by protestors in the USA during the occupy movement, the rebellion at Ferguson, Missouri, and at the #NoDAPL protests at Standing Rock, I argue for an expanded notion of airspace that does not reinforce the state violence of no-fly zones and regulatory restrictions. Once we situate drones as productive of atmospheric politics, spaces, and temporalities, we can account for their incorporation into military and governmental as well as beneficial or humanitarian uses and thereby develop a better understanding of the relational dynamics of the assemblage of airspaces, aerial vehicles, and their creators and operators.