The Driver

First we have the driver, who guides the vehicle across the terrainto its objective, under the guidance of the tank commander. We begin withthe driver because he operates the system that most clearly differentiatesthis piece of machinery from one of its ancestors, the artillery piece.Artillery finds it ancestry in the catapult, which was used to deliverfirepower against the city fortress, one of the more ominous manifestationsof civilization that was designed specifically to keep out the maraudingnomad warrior on horseback. Interestingly, the tank is the product of thecombination of this mode of territorialization with another, that of tractortechnology. The tractor was transformed from agrarian use to warrior useby being pressed into service to carry the gun tube that was aimed at thewalls of the fortress.

 

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