9-32

Η έννοια του πολιτισμού και ο λόγος για το σεξ στο σκάνδαλο του Άμπου Γκράιμπ

• Παπαηλία, Πηνελόπη

In staging the torture of Iraqi prisoners, U.S. military forces at Abu Ghraib prison drew on a series of cultural truisms regarding the sexual practices of «Arabs»: the purported source for these ideas was The Arab Mind, a 1973 book by Raphael Fatai, which recycles generations of Orientalist stereotypes. In this paper, consider how the reiteration of this ahistorical knowledge of «Arab sex» in media coverage of the scandal deflected attention from the particular historical conjuncture in which the boundaries between the American occupier and the Iraqi subject were being staked out through a politics and performance of sex. The emphasis on «their» premodern sexual practices and cultural backwardness screened the specificity of contemporary American sexual culture, particularly the mainstreaming of pornographic and sadomasochistic practices, as well as the homophobia, sexism, and racism of U.S. society. At the same time, the focus on timeless Arab sexual repression obscured the newness of the techniques and technologies (i.e. digitized voyeurism, mass dissemination of images with JPEGs, the Internet, and digital photography) through which discourses on sex and embodied forms of pleasure and pain were being produced.

• Sociology

• Sex
• Κοινωνιολογία
• Power (Social sciences)

Special issue "History and Social sciences", "Sexuality and powers"., Περιέχει σημειώσεις και βιβλιογραφία