And all look up, in absolute amazementAt those airborne above.-Ovid, Story of Daedalus and Icarus, in MetamorphosesFrench modernist architect Le Corbusier recalled effect of first airplane over Paris in 1909, he looked up to see Comte de Lambert's Wright biplane circling Eiffel Tower. was miraculous, it was mad! he proclaimed. For Le Corbusier the airplane, of armies of Age, airplane arouses our energies and our faith.1 For Le Corbusier, airplane was mad harbinger of a futuristic modernity. He was not alone. In America, an air-minded nation looked upon Wright brothers as quasi-messianic inventors of a wondrous, even miraculous machine:2 Aviation was future. . . . Many viewed airplanes as prophetic machines, promising enhanced mobility, enlarged prosperity, cultural uplift and even social harmony and perpetual peace in emerging 'air age.'3 In 1906 Britain, Wrights were initially seen as secretive Americans selfishly unwilling to collaborate with other would-be aviators to secure what Spectator referred to as Conquest of Air.4 No matter, inevitability of heavier-than-air flight was by this point assured, thanks to burgeoning technological ingenuity in England and abroad. Certainly in first decade of twentieth-century airplane was a figure of transfixing spectacle.Embedded in very language of Le Corbusier's and others' celebratory pronouncements of new technology is military application of airplane: advance guard, conquering armies, The air, like future, so said these early enthusiasts, would be conquered by airplane. Around time of Spectator article cited earlier, Wright brothers were secretly negotiating with British War Office to sell their flier and aeronautical knowledge. Negotiations broke off in December 1906, not because War Office lacked interest in military potential of this wondrous invention, but because Wrights insisted on signing a contract before allowing their clients to observe their aircraft in flight.5 Far from being committed to advancing a gospel of peace and uplift, Wrights were complicit from very beginning in recruiting airplane into armies of a new of European empire, literalizing Le Corbusier's proclamation.Le Corbusier's New Age accords nicely with Enda Duffy's claim about the of powered by development of airplane and motorcar.61 refer to airplane as an object of mobility rather than a mechanical thing because I am interested in it as an entity whose meaning inheres within not only its material essence-its thingness-but within its relation to human (typically masculine) subject who seeks to control it.7 As W. J. T. Mitchell succinctly puts it, Objects are way things appear to a subject.8 The airplane is an object that, to paraphrase Bill Brown, produce[s] use value, sign value [and] cultural capital.9 What airplane signifies, and indeed its uses within masculinist, nationalist, and imperial frameworks, are important parts of this essay.Coming in early years of twentieth century, age of coincides with of European empire its height and, paradoxically, onset of its decline.10 Duffy asserts that of speed contributed to winding down of empire insofar as speed and mechanical objects, automobiles and airplanes, through which human agents attain speed served, pragmatically, to de-exoticize distant colonized lands. The airplane arrived at that paradigm-shattering moment, argues Duffy, when it became clear that whole world had been mapped and conquered, and that global space was finite. The airplane, with its speed and its godlike capability to fly above gravity-bound mortals, seems first blush to be ready-made for imperial conquest. It is after all advance guard of a conquering army, in Le Corbusier's terms, an object figuratively inflected with subjugating imperial powers. …