So Captain George Smith, who was appointed Inspector of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1772, described the use of the verb ‘to animate’ in his An Universal Military Dictionary (1779). In late-eighteenthcentury military jargon, ‘animation’ responded to the needs of galvanizing soldiers to overcome their fears when facing a battle, or of maintaining troops in ordered formations in the fog of war. Somewhat paradoxically, animation meant enlivening, indeed, giving life to individuals in the face of their potential death. Smith was undoubtedly aware of the word's etymological roots in Latin animare, which Samuel Johnson's (1755) English dictionary described as ‘to quicken; to make alive; to give life to’, as well as ‘to give powers to; to heighten the powers or effect of any thing’, and ‘to encourage; to incite’. But etymology aside, noteworthy here is how a couple of hundred years before theorists like John Langshaw Austin or Gilles Deleuze, Captain Smith recognized how linguistic utterances could shape souls and transform states of affairs. By the sheer power of discourse, Smith contended, bodies could be rendered as elastic, strong, and speedy; by the power of discourse, they could be made to perform tasks they were not able to or did not want to do. By means of what Smith called ‘animation’, individuals could be programmed to become operative units of the war machine.

Fast-forward about 240 years: commanders’ enlivening elocutions have been replaced by more mundane logistical operations of images and sounds. We are familiar with how contemporary war machines abound with digital visuals of all sorts, especially computer-generated animations circulating on various video games and virtual reality platforms. Their programming functions have expanded from elevated cries as incitements to battle, to encompassing the whole cycle of warrior production from recruitment to post-combat therapy.