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Home , Charles Graner, Lingchi, Lynndie England, Seymour Hersh

Torture Culture: Lynching Photographs and the Images of Author(s): Dora Apel Reviewed work(s): Source: Art Journal, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 88-100 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20068386 . Accessed: 12/01/2012 18:14

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http://www.jstor.org In 2004, photographs of prisoner in Abu Ghraib became street murals inTehran. Photograph: Behrouz Merhri/ Getty Images. In the on the moral Abu several com topical commentary disgrace of Ghraib, mentators have noted a torture resemblance between the photos from and ' American lynching photos. These similarities have remained largely unexplored, most two sets however, including perhaps the significant effects of the of photos, is came to as sites acts which that both function of resistance against the very are in nature they represent. Between deeds that very different and motivation, and which took place at very different times and places, what DoraApel might we learn from the similarities? What indeed constitutes

these similarities?2 In this essay, I examine the usefulness of par Torture Culture: allels between the photographs taken at Abu Ghraib and lynching photographs from the early decades of the twentieth century, Lynching Photographs and explore the political responses to the Abu Ghraib photos both through their public distribution and in contemporary and the of artworks and civic Images displays. We may think the similarity between the lynching and Abu Ghraib in torture prison photos resides the unabashed picturing of and But more in sets humiliation itself. shocking, even, both of are the we not to photos, proud perpetrators whose smug gloating do expect see and who flaunt an is we appalling shamelessness. This because identify the as not perpetrators the immediate criminals here, their prisoners/victims. In torture both cases, for us, national and international laws against and murder are clearly violated, the basic imperatives of humanity and decency dishonored, and acts at 1.See Luc Sante, "Tourists and Torturers," opinion the images, like the they represent, evoke revulsion the humiliation and New York I editorial, Times, May 1,2004, A23; it see barbarity of all. But the perpetrators don't it this way. These events, in part Susan Sontag, "The Pictures Are Us," New York for the occur because both sets of in their loftiest Times Magazine, May 23, 2004, 24ff; Frank Rich, staged camera, perpetrators, "ItWas the Porn That Made Them Do It,"New believe are rationalizations, they committing their deeds for the good of the York Times, May 30, 2004, Section 2, I ; "Abigail nation or, at the that their acts are sanctioned a and Solomon-Godeau, "Remote Control," Artforum, least, by larger community Summer 2004, 61. serve the interests of that community. This belief illuminates the fact that the 2. For texts on Abu Ghraib, see three articles key exercise of such sadism and humiliation is a act. The by Seymour Hersh in : "Torture fundamentally political at Abu Ghraib," posted April 30, 2004, available viewer ismeant to identify with the proud torturers in the context of the online at http://www.newyorker.com/fact/ defense of a and cultural content/articles/040510fa_fact; "Chain of political hierarchy.3 The sense of sanction was central to American and cre Command," posted May 9, 2004, available online community lynching at http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/ ated the conditions by which white townsmen would attack and drive out black articles/040517fa_fact2; and "The Gray Zone," even down the black section of town. a posted May 15, 2004, available online at residents, burning Following lynching, http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/arti to they would close ranks around individual perpetrators protect them from any cles/040524fa_fact; see also Hersh's book Chain threat of state or federal authorities. Those who have acted of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib prosecution by might York: For Abu as to turn (New HarperCollins, 2004). whistle blowers had nowhere and risked dire retribution. Many who Ghraib see Web sites such as images, http:// would find a instead found it sicken www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444, and thought they spectacle lynching thrilling but in were http://www.rotten.com/library/crime/prison/ ing, they lived silence with these traumatic experiences. The effects The torture and abu-ghraib/. photographs major course more of far devastating for black members of the community. documents and reports have also been collected For white souvenir inMark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu supremacists, lynching photos became ways of reliving and theWar on Terror York: New Ghraib, (New the erotic thrills torture of and mutilation produced under the guise of righteous York Review of Books, 2004). civic as well as a of a racial and that 3. In this regard, Deleuze notes the importance actions, way reaffirming gendered hierarchy of the revolution of 1789 for the Marquis de Sade white men on and at the In kept top blacks bottom. gendered terms, lynching and the revolution of 1848 for Leopold von meant white male control over the desire of white women Sacher-Masoch, whose writings invite the viewer asserting by punish to with either the sadistic torturer or the race barrier and a sense entitlement to identify ing transgressions against affirming of masochistic victim See Gilles respectively. the bodies of black women unbridled coercion. It also meant Deleuze, Sacher-Masoch: An Interpretation, trans. through indulging Jean McNeil (London: Faberand Faber, 1971). a covert form of homoerotic gratification through the subjugated bodies of black

89 art journal men, who would often be humiliated, tortured, and castrated. In addition to the the served as a means lynchings themselves, lynching photographs of continuing social control, extended tools of terror which ultimately justified the deeds they as was represented protecting whiteness, which code for America itself.4 After became code 9/11, "democracy" for America, and defending democracy meant arresting and imprisoning thousands of Middle Easterners in the United Guant?namo and as as in sense States, Bay, , well Iraq, where the of was community sanction fundamental to the torture and atrocities. The commu in was most more nity question immediately the military and broadly the white, W conservative, Christian culture represented by tjie regime of George Bush, the

commander-in-chief, and reinforced by his cabinet and their chains of command. is now torture was a As known, the campaign of in Iraq top-secret program, code-named was , which approved by Secretary of Defense . Government turned in IBlH^Hi^HiflB^BiHi lawyers somersaults legal memorandums that to attempted skirt international treaties and show that the Geneva Conventions, The of Rubin 19, 1935, lynching Staceyjuly treatment which govern the of prisoners of war, did not and that President Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Photographs & apply Prints Center Bush could authorize torture a status Division, Schomburg for the of prisoners, effectively assigning him Research in Black New York Culture,The As a above the law. Harold Hongju Koh, dean of the Yale Law School, observed in Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. scathing rebuke of this unprecedented move, "If the president has commander in-chief to commit he has to commit to power torture, the power genocide, sanction to to slavery, promote apartheid, license summary execution."s In Bush's second term, Alberto Gonzalez, the architect of the memorandum charac the Geneva Conventions as U.S. terizing "quaint," became the Attorney General following the resignation of John Ashcroft. On October 25, 2004, theWhite House announced that to a new some according legal opinion, non-Iraqi prison ers were in Iraq still exempt from the rules of the Geneva Conventions. since to an to an Rumsfeld has admitted approving order hold Iraqi prisoner but keep his name off the prison rolls in order to shield him from Red Cross a violation of international law. An inspectors, outside investigative panel docu mented at seven more were least cases, followed by the admission that there dozens or to a hundred At cases up "ghost" detainees. least forty of prison deaths are being investigated as homicides, and this does not include all those who have in an died U.S.-run , unknown number. At least three hundred incidents of abuse have been at Guant?namo in reported Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Bush, war?a meanwhile, demanded that American prisoners of status the to to a moment refuses apply Iraqi "detainees"?be treated humanely, captured in the important and provocative film ControlRoom by Jehane Noujaim, about coverage of the war in its first months by the United States and Al Jazeera. At least some of the explicit photos of humiliation and torture, moreover, were meant as a apparently form of potential blackmail against the prisoners, threatening to shame them in front of their families and community if they did not become spies for the United States. One government consultant said, "I was told that was to create an the purpose of the photographs army of informants, 4. See my Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White could insert into people you back the population." Seymour Hersh revealed the Women, and theMob (New Brunswick, NJ: facts in the New Yorker, an unnamed CIA official and both current and for Rutgers University Press, 2004). quoting 5. inAdam Scholars Quoted Liptak, "Legal mer intelligence officials. They trace the problem to a special program set up in Criticize Torture Memos," New York Times, June with commandos authorized to use terror and at secret 25, 2004, A14. Afghanistan degradation 6. Hersh, "The Gray Zone."

90 SUMMER 2005 CIA was to holding tanks, which then exported Iraq.6 reaction to was not This would explain why Rumsfeld's first the photos or out.7 He shock, horror, surprise, but anger that they had gotten immediately cameras at banned soldiers' prisons. Like lynching photos, those from Abu were meant to a Ghraib stay within like-minded community. Spectacle lynchings were amateurs recorded by hundreds of with Kodaks, and professional photog out But town were as raphers turned thousands of postcards. Southern leaders distressed as Rumsfield when lynching photos found their way into the hands of

Northern left-wing and liberal activists, who used them for opposing ideological purposes, although itwould have been difficult to ban the taking of such photos would sometimes take a cut the (and mayors of profits of postcard sales). in mistreatment are not The Iraq and the of deeply rooted a and prisoner on a leash, and systematic American phenomena like lynchings, which followed history of Abu Ghraib October prison, , 25, On the other hand, the rhetoric of a "oriental 2003. slavery. longstanding demonizing ism," the old and unresolved Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the effects of the War in Americans to view Arabs and first Gulf 1991 have encouraged many many wan Muslims with growing suspicion and distrust, which burst into open and ton violence in the United States following 9/11. Two in most torture at photos particular have become associated with the First R. a Abu Ghraib. One is the picture of Class Lynndie England, twenty a to the neck of a naked one-year-old reservist, holding leash attached crawling known to as as an administrative clerk prisoner, guards "Gus." England's training did not qualify her to be in the prison. She claims she was told by her superiors to pose for the infamous photo, which was first published in theWashington Post on Her is as camera May 21, 2004. discomfort palpable she looks away from the toward the human being at the end of the leash she holds. Linked to the prone figure both by her gaze and by the physical line of connection, we might believe that the youthful England is trapped in a descending spiral of victimization to to produced by the pressure conform the demands of prison culture exerted by her largely male peers and superiors. By impelling her to comply with an act her these actions appalling of deep humiliation and documenting complicity, the for future and collusion in further acts of torture Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, prisoner at paved way acquiescence Abu Ghraib, November 4, 2003. a Arab man held and abuse. For the Arab world, however, the picture of naked by the throat as the a short-haired American woman in can "pet" of military garb worst most only confirm the suspicions of the perverse anti-Arab contempt

harbored by Americans, in New the most The second photo, first published the Yorker, represents 7. On the role of the father of , one emblematic of the torture scandal: the hooded man on a box of the accused soldiers, ingetting the pictures to image standing Minutes II,which broadcast them on wires to was Harmon Sixty April with attached his hands, who told by Sabrina 28, 2004, see "Here's How the Abu Ghraib that he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box. to the Photos Got Out," available online at http://talk According testimony left.com/ wires were not to new_archives/006410.html#006410, of the victim, Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, the only attached 8, 2004. M. also May Specialist Joseph Darby his but also his toes and Known as the the res fingers penis.8 "," image turned over CDs with photographs of the tor onates to ture. See "In a Soldier's Words, an Account of with allusions the , robed monks, the Statue of Liberty, the Concerns," New York Times, 22, 2004, avail May Klan, the , the mask of death. able online at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/ But most of like themortified the and 05/22/politics/22WTEX.html?ex=l 113969600& all, Christ, image signals abjection en=c6dc9c55e8f06b78&ei=5070&fta=y. and that lend it a surrender. The echoes of innocence, sacrifice, suffering tragic 8. See of statement provided by air are made all themore the and wires?a Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, January 16, 2004, in chilling by hooding decidedly Danner, Torture and Truth, 230. Boxer icon of the abuse" modern emblem of martyrdom, dubbed by Sarah "the

91 art journal it shows "no no no no no no although dogs, dead, leash, face, nakedness, pileup, no it "unites of torture and or thumbs-up."9 Rather, figures sacredness divinity," asW J. T. Mitchell observes. "This is not the crucified or resurrected Christ," he a notes, "but figure from the Passion plays, the staging of the humiliation and torture of the evocation of the man of sorrows Jesus." Indeed, and the sympathy summoned from the as is viewer, Mitchell argues, produced by the stillness and of the under the serenity figure duress, graceful, open-armed gesture that is the a "natural result of man's attempt to maintain his balance in a difficult situation." The U.S. military, although claiming the moral high ground in the name of and "spreading freedom democracy" has here assumed the position of Roman of the torturers, crucifiers, persecutors humble and holy.10 Other of torture also come to such as images mind, those of lingchi?the ancient Chinese torture and execution ritual in which the victim is drugged and parts of the body slowly sliced away. Known as "death by division into a thousand parts," the practice was first photographed in in 1905 by French soldiers. Georges Bataille owned and published three such photographs in his 1961 book TheTears of Eros.More recently, a lingchiphotograph became the basis of a a twenty-four-minute video, Lingchi?Echoes of Historical Photograph, by Taiwanese artist Chen Such Chieh-jen. photographs served colonial interests by the Christian of China; also the first uses of Chen Chieh-jen. Still from Lingchi?Echoes justifying "saving" they represent a Historical 2002. Installation in China available as an exotic in of Photograph, photography China, making spectacle Europe, with twenty-four-minute video.Taipei Fine especially when lingchiphotographs were made into postcards and widely distrib Arts Museum. Courtesy of the artist. " uted. Like the lynching postcards and digital snapshots of Abu Ghraib, they functioned as souvenirs that were meant to demonstrate the political superiority of one group over another.

Chen's contemporary video, re-creating the historical torture of 1905, shows to to torture as as what appear be the deeply shamed witnesses the well the grueling ordeal of the victim, allowing the viewer to identify with both and the unbearable. Chen the visual making experience virtually conveys ambiguity between ecstasy and stupefaction in the lolling head and rolling eyes of the vic tim, which echoes the reading of such photos by Bataille, who saw on the Chinese an victim's face expression that confirmed his assumptions about the close connection between and to execu pleasure pain. Bataille sought endow the 9. Sarah Boxer, "Torture Incarnate, and Propped tions of with an sacred or sacrificial as on a Pedestal," New York Times, June 13, 2004. lingchi ambiguously quality; but, Giorgio 10.W. T. Mitchell, "Echoes of a Christian J. Agamben argues, the conceptual apparatus of sacrifice and eroticism is not ade Symbol," Tribune, June 27, 2004, Section to the and banal violence of modern life.I2 The 2, I, available online at http://humanities. quate grasp profane political uchicago.edu/faculty/mitchell/interviews.htm. delirium of the victim combined with the shame of the witnesses in Chen's fic I I. For the most authoritative information on tional video is traumatic; this to the need lingchi, see the work of the research group piercingly helps explain psychological Turandot, which held a conference on "The for the hood in Iraq,which not only disorients the victim, but also effaces their of Pain," 22-23, 2005, at Representation April for the and more turns the into an humanity perpetrator easily subject object. University College Cork inCork, Ireland. The When were into souvenir Turandot Web site on Chinese torture is lynching photos transformed postcards, they see http://turandot.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/. Also An-yi were sent to friends and with the senders' family proud boasts of having been Pan, "Contemporary Taiwanese Art in the Era in the blackness an exotic and the "look" of of Contention," inContemporary Taiwanese Art in mob, making spectacle privileging the Era exh. cat. of Contention, (Ithaca: Johnson whites over blacks. Spectacle lynchings similarly relied on the look of the crowd Museum of Art, Cornell University; Taipei: Taipei to reaffirm notions of white "manliness" over the of the Fine Arts Museum, 2004), 158, 160-61. superior stereotype 12. Homo Sacer: sexual black even as white men in the mob on Giorgio Agamben, Sovereign hyper male, many acted repressed Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen homoerotic desires and white women vicarious in many found pleasure the (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 112-15. mob's exposure and penetrations of the black body. At Abu Ghraib, compact

92 SUMMER 2005 discs, videos, and computer files of digital images performed the role of the and were meant to circulate within the of American postcards, only community military personnel, their families, and friends. The pictures established the right of the soldiers to "look" at the nude and brutalized bodies of their victims, even to pose with corpses, while effacing the look of the prisoners through hooding and other forms of degradation. voices were Likewise, the voices of the tortured, like the of lynching victims, meant to be silenced outside the circumstances of their ordeal. But testimonies

have been taken. One prisoner tells of being covered with phosphoric liquid from a chemical light and raped with a stick: "Then they broke the glowing fin ger and spread it on me until Iwas glowing and they were laughing. They took me to room me to on the And one of the the and they signaled get floor. police he put a part of his stick that he always carries inside my ass and I felt it going me 2 I started and he inside about centimeters, approximately. And screaming, out.... And were me all these instances."I3 pulled it they taking pictures of during were meant to to the as well as souvenirs. The The photos add shaming provide thrills of sexualized violence became less veiled and more explicit than in lynch to where and videos of torture and the sexual ing photos, the point photographs were American sex abuse of prisoners interleaved with images of soldiers having with each other.

the torture scenarios serves a But the pornographic function of larger politi in the extreme and of others relies cal function. The pleasure pain degradation on a in on Arabs process of that depends large part constructing as an as men were and Muslims undifferentiated mass, just black stereotyped en masse then were all "black beast by white supremacists. Back they rapists"; now are them easier to sexu they all "terrorists," making far humiliate, torture, kill. The emotional and dehumanization ally exploit, and necessary distancing Nazis to as of the Other is also revealed by language. The referred Jews "pieces"; to an as '4 the torture American soldiers refer Iraqi prisoner "it." Although photos seem to of events are employ the basic structuring principle pornography?the the camera in order to deliver real but staged for prurient pleasure?the proto are Porno actors do not for the cols fundamentally different. mug camera; they a Here is no not maintain fiction of authenticity. there "fiction" of authenticity, victims are not but because the is only because the willing actors, pleasure not meant to be found in their pruriently deployed bodies but in the exultant over a mastery of those who wield power them, representing different cultural

and political order. scenar Thus the influence of pornography did not determine these torture ios, any more than it did lynchings. The trend in American culture which holds in as was in or Arabs and Muslims contempt, just "blackness" held contempt, 13.Translation of statement [name blacked out], must held for such acts. Hersh January 21, 2004, inDanner, Torture and Truth, earlier colonial subjects, be responsible reports 248. as were to Muslims that government authorities searching for ways dominate 14. Robin Tolmach Lakoff, "From Ancient Greece in the months before the invasion of conservatives to Iraq, the Power of Words inWartime," New Iraq, pro-war Washington York Times, 18, 2004, Section F, 3. The onto are to humiliation. May latched the notion that Arabs particularly vulnerable sexual are also derisively called "hajis," the way the used the book TheArab Mind Patai, a cultural Vietnamese were called "gooks." They 1978 by Raphael anthropologist, 15. See, for example, "MuslimsWere Outraged; which became "the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior" and depicted sexual SoWere New York Times, Christians," May 9, shame and humiliation as the weakness of Arabs. is 2004, Section 4, 5. Edward Said roundly attacked biggest Although privacy in landmark 1978 Orientalism. commentators have noted that Arabs are as shamed and Patai's book his study indeed deeply ingrained,

93 art journal same humiliated as any of us would be in the situation.ls was the man , Rumsfeld's top intelligence official, point for implementing the secret program in Iraq and deciding that no rules applied. s in a in an Cambone military assistant, William G. Boykin, speech Oregon church, to in equated the Muslim world with Satan. This helps explain why prisoners, addition to being raped and ridden like dogs, were also forced to eat pork and drink in contravention of their These are crimes of alcohol religion.l6 national, as well as a colonialist ethnic, race, and religious hatred, mentality by military occupiers. It is no surprise that this is the perception of much of the Arab world, expressed by Abdelbari Atwan in A? Quds alAiabi, a London-based Arabic daily: "The torture is not the work of a few American soldiers. It is the result of an

official American culture that deliberately insults and humiliates Muslims."I7 issue is more Cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek suggests that the of abuse perva sive and fundamental to American culture. "Far too often," he writes, "we are treated to images of soldiers and students forced to assume humiliating poses, and sadistic The torture at Abu perform debasing gestures, suffer punishments. was not a case American toward a Third World Ghraib thus simply of arrogance In to the the were people. being submitted humiliating tortures, Iraqi prisoners into American s assertion American effectively initiated culture."l8 Zizek stereotypes culture as awhole, while diminishing the specific political culpability of the crimes is not that there is some Bush regime for the of Abu Ghraib. My argument to that torture and its essential American impulse torture, but representations are acts which of and conscious political follow recognizable protocols power subordination, of which lynching and Abu Ghraib are two examples. an ritu There is also important difference between American college hazing are in als and the torture of prisoners, in that those who victims/participants the a do not. former activity ultimately have choice, while Iraqi prisoners decidedly and do not the The pranks of frat boys, however dangerous sadistic, yet equal 16.Andrew Buncombe, and Justin Huggler, at as crimes of rape, torture, and murder Abu Ghraib, Rush Limbaugh has pub Leonard Doyle, "Abu Ghraib: Inmates Raped, Ridden Like Animals, and Forced to Eat Pork," licly suggested.19 Such behavior was tolerated for months with full knowledge available online at http://news.independent.co. not as an up the chain of command and would have occurred ongoing practice uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=523724. was was 17.Quoted inAlan Cowell, "Bush'sWords Do without the conviction that it sanctioned. It not surprising, then, when to at New York Little Ease Horror Prison Deeds," an R. the former defense secre independent panel headed by James Schlesinger, Times, May 7, 2004, A12. for the abuse of in and 18. Slavoj Zizek, "What Rumsfeld Doesn't Know tary, assigned responsibility prisoners Iraq, Afghanistan, that He Knows about Abu Ghraib," InThese to that Guant?namo Bay senior Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld, stating Times, May 21, 2004, available online at were aware to them.20 www.inthesetimes.com. officials of the problems and failed address Indeed, they 19. Rush dismissed the Abu Ghraib Limbaugh effectively authorized them. photos saying, "It is no different than what hap The abusive behavior of American Charles F. Graner, for pens at the Skull and Bones initiation." Quoted in prison guards?and "Abu Ghraib in Inconvenient Evidence: one most sadistic abusers in the Abu Ghraib was one? Timeline," example, of the scandal, Prison Abu Ghraib, exh. cat. Iraqi Photographs from serves as a This is evident in relation better analogy than hazing rituals. especially (New York: International Center of Photography: to in States who are locked the : Andy Warhol Museum, 2004). See immigrant "detainees" the United up by Depart also "Commentators Conflate 'Depraved' Art ment to access to and of Homeland Security prior deportation. Without lawyers and Abu Ghraib Photos," May 14, 2004, available as online at Artforum.com/archive/ id=6885& soon-to-be-out-of-reach in countries such Guyana, Egypt, and Tunisia, many search=commentators%20Conflate. of these detainees receive brutal treatment all too reminiscent of Abu Ghraib, 20. See "The 2004, Schlesinger Report," August as Daniel for National Public Radio. Such have no inDanner, Torture and Truth, 329-99. Zwerdling reports prisoners 21. Daniel "U.S. Detainee Abuse Zwerdling, redress for their complaints.21 Cases Fall the November through Cracks," 18, Like the which were and transformed into 2004, available online at www.npr.org/tem lynching photos appropriated plates/story/story.php?storyld=4173701. antilynching images by left-wing and liberal artists and organizations in the 1930s

94 SUMMER 2005 (such as the John Reed Club and International Labor Defense, both affiliated with the Communist Party, and the NAACP), the torture photos of Abu Ghraib

also have become the basis for antiwar images and artworks.22 The photos of the man on a man are now as on leash and the hooded painted side by side murals a in once wall Tehran, demonstrating again that the meaning of images depends on the arena in which they circulate. Like their distribution in the world media,

this public visibility transforms them from private souvenirs of American into anti-American supremacy blistering pictures. was in New com The photograph reprinted the York Times, where Sarah Boxer on man as woman mented the hooded echoing the veiled who walks by the murals a male the two.23 But there is (with companion), effectively conflating a is an difference between hooding and veiling. Though there clearly attempt to as a to "feminize" Arabs and Muslims whole through their subordination American the hooded never becomes a veiled dominance, figure figure. Rather, a continuum is two produced between the murals that transforms the abjection of the crawling prisoner, his body truncated by the edge of the mural, into the man sorrows. man upright of The hooded parallels the masculinized figure of at same Lynndie England, produced about the size, counterpoising the diffident American soldier in a action seems to engaged debasing with the figure who to appeal the world through his open-armed gesture, creating the appearance a of noble sacrifice, if for nonexistent redemptive purpose. as men at Just the lynching rituals threatened with castration, Abu Ghraib, terror also took the form of threatening the masculinity of the prisoners, using to menace women to sex dogs and attack naked prisoners and allowing soldiers even to ually humiliate them and handle and mock their genitals, pointing and laughing while taking photographs. Here, as Lynndie England mocks the genitals one a row of in of naked prisoners, her jauntiness and the casualness of her dan gling cigarette differ markedly from the stiffness of her pose with the prisoner on a leash. is The man to whom she who England's cooptation complete. points, mmmv*wt. ^mxr-vr' m.im.bii ihm?bu. m has since been released, has come forward to identify himself as Saddam Saleh. is Lynndie England and prisoners at Abu He says he only knows that he the third from the right because American sol Ghraib. diers brought the photograph to his cell and pointed him out, in an obvious to him He was effort humiliate further. tortured for another eighteen days before

the began.24

Other prisoners also have testified about their sexual humiliation: "The two American that were when were were me girls there they beating me, they hitting with a ball made of sponge on my dick. And when Iwas tied up inmy room, one of the with blonde hair, she iswhite, she was with dick." 22. See my Imagery of Lynching. girls, playing my 23. "Torture and on a was on a to Boxer, Incarnate, Propped This prisoner also urinated by military policeman and made bark Pedestal." like a dog, hit on the side of the head so forcefully that he lost consciousness, 24. Buncombe, Huggler, and Doyle, "Abu Ghraib." forced to wear women's red underwear on his head, and tied to a window in his 25. See of statements: blacked [name cell with his hands behind his back until he again lost consciousness. Another out], January 21, 2004; Shalan Said Al-Sharoni, saw a beaten with Others remembered how soldiers January 17, 2004; Nori Samir Gunbar Al-Yasseri, prisoner's genitals gloves. 17, 2004; Hussein Mohssein Mata Al January ordered them to masturbate, sometimes in front of female soldiers, and to simu Zayiadi, January 4, 2004; Hiadar Sabar Abed late homosexual acts.25 Raban characterizes the infantilization Miktub Al-Aboodi, January 20, 2004; all in Jonathan effectively Danner, Torture and Truth, 247-48, 234, 236-37, and feminization of Arabs by the Americans: "Here is Arabia nude, faceless under 240, 245. a or mas hood, feminised in women's panties, forced into infantile 26. Jonathan Raban, "Emasculating Arabia," The ridiculously Guardian (London), May 13, 2004, Features, 6.

95 art journal sex turbatory and sodomy."26 A photograph of a human pyramid pictures a grinning Sabrina Harman and posing with their handiwork, Graner offering a thumbs-up. The word "RAPEIST" [sic], written on the leg of one of the prisoners, echoes the charges against black lynching victims and becomes a bitter parody of blaming the victim for the crime of the perpetrator. "We thought it looked funny, so pic tures were taken," England told investigators.27 She confessed that piling prison ers naked or forcing them tomasturbate had nothing to do with interrogations; but it has everything to do with the arrogance that seeks global domination and is insensitive to the as a to subjugation of "others," functioning corollary

American nationalist pride. Hussein Mohssein Mata Al-Zayiadi was among the Iraqis in the pyramid sworn who later gave testimony in which he described his ordeal and its after math: "After that Nouri, :t they brought my friends, Haidar, Ahmed, Ahzem, Hashiem, Mustafa, and I and put us 2 on the bottom, 2 on top of them, and Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner they 2 on of those and one on took of us and we were naked. behind human pyramid of hooded Iraqi top top. They pictures at Abu November 7 or prisoners Ghraib, 8, After the end of the beating, they took us to our separate cells and they opened 2003. the water in the cell and told us to lay face down in the water and we stayed like

that until the morning, in the water, naked, without clothes." When asked how he felt about this treatment, he replied, "Iwas trying to kill myself but I didn't

have any way of doing it."28 Some antiwar man a two images of the hooded produce conflation of the most iconic images. A photograph of a figure at a London protest depicts a black hooded figure with a noose or a leash around his neck, holding a sign with a the and the In picture of hooded man, the slogan, "Bring troops home now." another protest painting, the hooded man is painted next to the Statue of Liberty on awall in the crowded Shiite section of Baghdad known as Sadr City. The is mural the work of the thirty-one-year-old artist Salaheddin Sallat. The wires attached to the hooded man are connected to an as are in electric grid, they the Salaheddin Sallat. "That Freedom for Bush," a 2004. Mural in Sadr City, Baghdad. real photo, with the Statue of Liberty pulling the switch. Sallat, who lives in AP Wide World Photos. Photograph: small house with eighteen members of his family, observed, "In fact, when I saw the photo ofthat man, itmade me think of the Statue of Liberty," further noting, "I chose this area because everyone can see it."29 Such recontextualizations of the seen as to acts Abu Ghraib images may be contributing the resistance against the Here mere act they represent. Sallat makes clear his understanding that the of rendering the images visible to the public begins their undoing. The Statue of Liberty sports awhite hood below the spikes of her crown and wears a medallion with a small red cross at her neck, the Eastern Orthodox cross more familiar to Iraqis. The words painted on the wall indicate the mockery of "freedom" that the war on Iraq has produced, doubling the hooded man with once the preeminent symbol of America. The Statue of Liberty, the icon of wel come to stands above all for American But the rhetoric of 27. "U.S. Rules on Prisoners Seen as a Back and refugees, democracy. is for its extreme The that illustrate the Forth of Mixed Messages to G.I.'s," New York democracy exposed hypocrisy. images Times, 22, 2004, A7. June words "That Freedom for Bush" represent what this rhetoric has set in 28. Translation of statement provided by Hussein and come to mean; since the rationale for war was the of freedom and Mohssein Mata Al-Zayiadi, January 18, 2004, in export Danner, Torture and Truth, 240. democracy, it is Liberty and no other symbol, such as Uncle Sam, which best 29. Virginie Locussol, "U.S. Prison Abuse Painted America. But her torch now becomes a lethal electric current. Effec on Wall," June 2, 2004, available online at represents Novinite.com/view_news.php?id=35348. tively conflating Liberty and the executioner into a single image, the figures

96 SUMMER 2005 become doppelgangers; the mask of degradation becomes the face of America, the hooded man its innocent victim. Commenting on the power of the hooded man man and the leashed images, Mark Danner calls such representations the of which have "the "perfect masterpieces propaganda" considerable advantage of true." "Had to create a being bin Laden sought powerful trademark image for his international product of global ," he writes, "he could scarcely have done better the on hiring cleverest advertising firm Madison Avenue."30 The Statue of Liberty transformed into the standard bearer of racial oppres sion evokes an antilynching image from the 1930s produced in protest of the Scottsboro the notorious case of nine black men trials, young falsely accused of raping two white girls on a freight train headed toward Alabama. In Scottsboro: A StoryTold in Prints, first produced in 1933, a linocut depicts the attempt by the courts to carry out a A hooded Klansman assumes his Linocut, 1935, from Lin Shin Khan and "legal lynching." position on Tony Perez, Scottsboro, Alabama: A Story the pedestal, holding a lynch rope in one hand and a small in in Linoleum 2002. Cuts, published Courtesy the other. Marked a and by swastika, cross, backwards dollar sign, the Klansman of New York University Press. replaces Liberty with race hatred, intolerance, and greed while Liberty runs for her life.

Another protest image, produced by the L.A. graphic design group Forkscrew was in the and streets of New York Los Graphics, placed subways City and Angeles following the revelations of Abu Ghraib.31 Produced in silhouette, the hooded man in his on now a ragged cape stands what becomes pedestal, like the Statue of his balance even as it iconic Liberty, emphasizing precarious strengthens the status of the image. The hooded man has become a logo for the war itself, codi a fied in the symbol of time bomb next to the stylized word "iRaq," an echo of the iPod logo, just as the fake hot-pink or chartreuse backgrounds evoke the iPod ads. Alluding to the Pop artmultiples associated with Andy Warhol, the slick and colorful the commercialization the posters suggest of war, evoking Halliburton and the it on staggering profits has made noncompetitive contracts. The posters torture as further imply the commodification of itself central to the occupation of Torture as a takes its crassest in Iraq. commodity form the phenomenon of common and "outsourcing"?the employment delegation of the task of interro to mercenaries called "civilian contractors" four men Forkscrew Graphics. iRaq posters, 2004. gation euphemistically (the Four offset each 24 x 36 in. posters, approx. who were notoriously murdered and mutilated in Falluj ah in April 2004 were (61 x 91.5 cm). Published online at civilian Inserted actual in stations on forkscrew.com. contractors). among iPod ads subway and the streets of New York and Los the torture as a war Angeles, selling of product is 30. Danner, Torture and Truth, 29. ironically complete. 31. The hooded man is one of four poster paro Richard Serra also appropriated the hooded man for StopBush, a color litho dies; the other three depict American soldiers in done as a free downloadable for and, in another silhouette handling guns, shoulder-fired missiles, graph poster pleasevote.com, or grenades. See www.forkscrew.com/main.html. version, for an Artists Coming Together benefit print, StopB S.32 Serra distributed 32. See for www.bloodforoil.org/please-vote/ these in art mainstream on prints widely venues, publications, and the Internet another pleasevote.com image designed by Serra that on in of the Democratic the election. superimposes Bush's face Goya's painting support campaigns for 2004 The haunting Saturn His Children; the was fea Devouring image becomes emblematic of American as well as the tured as an ad on the back cover of . image imperial arrogance signal crime of the Bush 33. Artnet.news, September 7, 2004, available administration, encapsulating the argument for his defeat. In online at www.artnet.com/Magazine/news/art an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, Serra condemned the Bush netnews2/artnetnews9-7-04.asp. administration for its denial of Western values and law.33 Sire has 34. Geoffrey Sire, "Undecided, but Leaning Geoffrey argued toward Skull: Political Art in the of can unnerve now our Age Spin," that although images still us, it is much harder to penetrate October 28, 2004, available online at http:// "overmediated consciousness."34The that still have such are those www.mnartists.org/article.do;jsessionid=EEA59F images power 7168038D64A9417438CA880F4A?rid=51507. that allude to the real.

97 art journal Richard Serra. Stop Bush, 2004. Offset printing on paper. Installation view. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery, New York. Photograph ? 2004 Robert Polidori.

35. See George H. Roeder, Jr., The Censored War: American Visual Experience during World War Two (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). For the and Eddie Adams photos, see http://images.google.com/images?h I=en&lr=&q =Vietnam+war+photos. 36. "The ," inDanner, Torture and Truth, 279-328. 37. Images included forced sodomy, Lynndie England having sex with other U.S. soldiers in front of prisoners, prisoners cowering in front of attack dogs, Iraqiwomen being forced to expose their breasts, naked prisoners tied up together, prisoners forced to masturbate, and a prisoner repeatedly smashing his head against a wall. On May 21, 2004, on the Washington PostWeb site, executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr., described the newspaper's decision not to publish many of the abuse images because they were "so shocking and in such bad taste, especially the extensive nudity." See "Abu Ghraib Timeline," in Incon venient Evidence. Also see Seymour Hersh's pre sentation at Hampden-Sydney College inVirginia, "Terrorism: A Report fromWashington," a video presented on C-Span, September 9, 2004, in which he attests to having seen "many worse" photographs than the ones published by the New Yorker, available online at www.c-span.org/ search/basic.asp?ResultStart= &ResultCount=I 10 &BasicQueryText=Seymour+Hersh). The New Yorker decided not to publish those photos, a decision that Hersh defended. 38. Quoted in "Theweleit et al. on the Iconography The hooded man is the latest addition to a of iconic of War," International News Digest, May 17, 2004, genealogy images, at available online www.artforum. com/news/ which includes the photos of the planes crashing into theWorld Trade Center week=20042l#news6892. towers on ii and, from the , Nick Ut's of a naked 39. Nicholas Blanford, "IraqiArtists Depict Anger 9/ photograph over Abu available online down a road in another sacri Ghraib," June 15, 2004, Vietnamese girl burned by napalm fleeing Saigon, at http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0615/ or a communist executed in ficial figure, Eddie Adams's photo of guerrilla being p07sOI-woiq.html, and Samir Haddad and Mazen a street. U.S. of from World Ghazi, "Iraqi Plastic Art Documents Abu Ghraib Saigon After the government censorship photographs available online at Abuse," June 6, 2004, http:// a on the American War II and Korea, such pictures had shocking effect public.35 www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004 06/06/article02.shtml. Similarly, the Abu Ghraib photos stand in stark contrast to the officially approved 40. See "Abu Ghraib's Women Prisoners," May in which are consis and sanitized representations of the American presence Iraq, 26, 2004, available online at http://www.thinking tent with the refusal to on civilian casualties and its peace.com/pages/arts2/arts210.html; Francine government's report Iraqi The Post D'Amico, "TheWomen of Abu Ghraib," censorship of photos of returning coffins with the American dead. Standard, May 23, 2004, CI ;and Annia Ciezadlo, The issues of and also have been addressed in protest art. "For IraqiWomen, Abu Ghraib's Taint," May 28, gender sexuality available online at and an unreleased video both show that at least one woman 2004, http://www.csmonitor. The Taguba Report I com/2004/0528/pO s02-woiq.html. was were forced to Further evidence of prisoner raped, while others strip.36 41. Sculptor Taher Wahib produced a Statue of in various sex acts and themselves was Liberty with her head replaced by chained hands, soldiers engaging with prisoners among her feet lashed and her robe set on fire together, the closed-door session on reported following three-hour, May 12, 2004, during by her own torch, which stands on a Baghdad were shown over hundred street behind barbed wire and barriers with a flag which members of Congress eighteen photographs that reads, "Abu Freedom Park"; another were a Gulag and videos.37 In another case, three Army soldiers accused of assaulting statue ismade entirely of chains and wears a female While such as the New Yorkerand the T-shirt distributed to Iraqis by coalition troops, Iraqi prisoner. publications Washington

98 SUMMER 2005 Postmade decisions not to publish many of the more disturbing photographs, an Klaus Theweleit, author of Male Fantasies, in interview with the S?ddeutsche Zeitung, such restraint: "I have these kinds of scenes in from argued against my head, We could these concentration camps, from splatter, snuff, and porn films. repress we over to images, but then give ourselves the illusion spread by the sanitized editions of the daily news: thatwe live in a half-civilized world."38 a artist A protest image produced by Qassim al-Sabti, fifty-one-year-old Iraqi and owner of the Hewar Gallery in theWazerieh district of central Baghdad, the crimes the woman. A lifesize female man poignantly captures against Iraqi a an nequin lies prone, her veil white death shroud marred only by oozing red was to this a of a triangle. Al-Sabti inspired produce work after receiving copy a was a U.S. had sent letter that prisoner, who raped and impregnated by guard, to was a in a woman her family. "There letter circulating Fallujah from inside Abu Ghraib," al-Sabti said. "She was begging the resistance to bomb Abu Ghraib and bring down the walls on their heads so that their suffering would end. I felt like screaming when I heard this. Iwanted to draw the attention of the American people."39 out was one to reveal what The letter, smuggled of the prison, of the few was to women and ostracism attached happening inside Abu Ghraib. The shame to is so that most women who have been having been raped egregious Iraqi not even in released will discuss their experiences, private. Amal Kadham Swadi, one seven women women at of Iraqi lawyers representing Abu Ghraib, has begun to uncover extent women across the case the of atrocities against Iraq, including one woman was and ridden like a at of seventy-year-old who harnessed donkey women are or arrested Abu Ghraib. Many the wives daughters of male suspects, as a way of pressuring the men.40 to to an Al-Sabti invited twenty artists contribute works exhibition inspired at by the humiliations Abu Ghraib.4' Abdel-Karim Khalil produced three works al-Sabti. title unknown. Qassim Sculpture, s a marble of a hooded for al-Sabti exhibition, including roughly foot-high carving Abdel-Karim Khalil. Sculpture, title unknown. themedium white marble associated with classical Greek Installation views, Hewar Gallery, Baghdad, detainee. Combining of 2004. Photographs: Steve Mumford. a barbarian sculpture and rational civilization with the symbol of oppressor, a to in order to Khalil appropriates form traditionally used represent "whiteness" the He "Some artists used to be but now universalize figure. observed, neutral,

there are artists, poets, and writers who have all reached the decision that the are a new sense in Americans destroyers. It has given them of purpose art."42 bearing the words, "Iraq, progress and prosper It took decades of as well as economic and forces to ity." See Sammy Ketz, "IraqiArtists Portray Ugly struggle political finally Wounds of U.S. Occupation," June 7, 2004, subdue the systematic lynching of black people and to transform lynching available online at http://www.middle-east from a support of white supremacy into an weapon online.com/english/culture/?id= 10196= 10196&f photography antilynching ormat=0. For more on Baghdad artists, including through the mass publication of lynching photos and especially the pictures of al-Sabti, see Steve Mumford, "The Artists of the vicious disfigurement of EmmettTill, which helped galvanize the civil rights Baghdad," inBaghdad Journal, November 11, 2003, movement. a more instantaneous available online at Artnet.com/magazine/ fea The Abu Ghraib photos had effect, unleashing tures/mumford/mumford I l-l For an l-03.asp. public horror and outrage around the world through global distribution of the interview with al-Sabti, see Edward Miller, "In the via More seventeen First Person," Mennonite Central Committee, pictures the Internet and television. recently, of the images 8, 2003, available online at www.mcc. were on Prison September view in the fall 2004 exhibition Inconvenient Evidence: Iraqi Photographs org/areaserv/middleeast/iraq/interviews/qasim. html. fromAbu Ghraib, curated by BrianWallis for the International Center of Photography 42. Blanford, "IraqiArtists"; Hamza Hendawi, in New York and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Like the photographs of Prisoners Used in "Images Iraqi Art," May 8, of in the exhibitions of Without that in New York in 2004, available online at http://www.liberaltopia. lynchings Sanctuary began some org/archives/2004/05/more_proof_some.php. 2000, Inconvenient Evidence may raise the question for of whether such exhibi

99 art journal An Iraqi family in downtown Baghdad reacts to images of tortured prisoners broadcast on the Arabic channel AI Jazeera. Photograph: Sungsu Cho/Polaris.

tions the available once to a make photographs again gaze of mastery, reinforcing their humiliating effect. But just as the photos' initial production and forms of were so is in circumscribed circulation political acts, their display such public venues to now, exposing American pretensions racial, cultural, and political in a sense is dominance Iraq and revealing brutality and of entitlement that firmly rooted in the nationalist ideology of the Bush administration. Indeed, the lurid atrocities that traveled the globe were branded by one military official a "moral Chernobyl." But unlike Chernobyl, as Christopher at was Hitchens points out, the only accident Abu Ghraib the release of the torture was pictures to the world.43 The and abuse of prisoners mandated and at vent to even most justified the top, and those who gave the gratuitous sadistic in a sanction. impulses felt safe carefully circumscribed culture of community to this That community began scrambling repair the public relations disaster not to trauma con represented for the United States, ameliorate the and loss that cost in or to stitute the human Iraq reexamine the underlying policies that have to torture to led the systematic and continuing pattern of but salvage their moral authority by shirking responsibility and blaming a few "bad apples." And they at in succeeded, least the United States, by winning another election. How, then, torture own is of an do photographs of produce their undoing? When the power turned it into a that the image against itself, transforming picture opposes very thing the photograph means to uphold? We can affirm that different meanings are to arenas in produced according the which those images circulate, and that association status is the of photographs and artworks with the of the real critical to a an producing both successful countereffect and effectively persuasive protest art. we must torture not But also recognize that images do inherently produce own on us. their undoing?it depends

Dora Apel is associate professor andW. Hawkins Ferry Chair inModern and Contemporary Art at 43. Hitchens, "A Moral Christopher Chernobyl: Wayne State University, Detroit. Her books include Memory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art of Secondary for theWorst of Abu Prepare Ghraib," Slate, June Witnessing and Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob. 14, 2004, available online at slate.msn.com/id/ 2102373.

100 summer 2005