JZB writes:

"Art of Darkness:

The Abu Ghraib Effect"

J. Bratich

The average duration of an afterimage on the human eye is generally no more than a few minutes. What is less measurable is an afterimage on an entire culture, much less on global public opinion. So what can we say about the lingering effects of the traumatic images of Abu Ghraib?At one level there has been a predictable effort on the part of US authorities to locate blame among bad apples and rogue soldiers. Increasingly, Abu Ghraib is presented as an exceptional compound, isolated in its inhumanity from the rest of the Iraqi theatre. The atrocities are further being winnowed into "Cellblock 1-A", as if "the horror" could be compartmentalized in a bureaucratic segment. Perhaps soon we will see Colonel Kurtz references emerging, where Abu Ghraib is likened to the jungle outpost in "Apocalypse Now." But there is something radically different about Abu Grhaib that prevents the Heart of Darkness analogy.

Essentially, Kurtz and his minions had created a black hole in the jungle, a cult of personality and savagery that increasingly pushed towards implosive oblivion while drawing in outside elements (like Martin Sheen's Captain Willard). In contrast to this centripetal force, Abu Ghraib cannot stand in isolation, no matter how fortified its walls or how dense its barbed wire.
For one thing, Abu Ghraib, unlike Kurtz's hidden zone, already has a history. It is well known that the compound was a site for extreme cruelty under Hussein's regime, and the sadism of multiple mini-Kurtzes populating the US detention facility carry on that tradition under the banner of anti-tyranny. Another, more important difference can be best summed up by a Korean War veteran, as reported in The New York Times Monday. The former POW was appalled by the current events, but not by the atrocities per se: "that stuff goes on, but you don't take pictures like these guys did". What makes Abu Ghraib a new event in the history of atrocities, and makes it ultimately radically different from the Kurtz compound, is its relationship to its images.

This is not to say torture has never been captured on film, but that the sex-torture rituals seem to have been meticulously and deliberately arranged for the cameras. While the photos are currently circulating as "evidence" of US cruelty, it is obvious that they were not originally created as documentary exposure. One has to ask first off: why were the images taken in the first place, and what was their destination? Were they intended to circulate among the guards in Abu Ghraib, among soldiers elsewhere, or perhaps to be shown to the prisoners themselves? Is there an underground traffic ring in cruelty-images, complete with trading cards and scrapbooks? In any case, the striking use of photography indicates that, unlike the Kurtz compound, Abu Ghraib wanted to be known, to be displayed, even to be appreciated.

By appreciation I mean that there is something unnerving about the aesthetic design infusing the pictures. A careful examination of the photos seems to bear this out. The highly stylized poses of the prisoners are intended to strip Iraqis down to their raw biological being, to what Giorgio Agamben has referred to as "naked life." This image-reduction is the first step in "disappearing" the humanity of the prisoners, and quickens their actual annihilation. The prisoners are masked, disrobed, arranged into sexually humiliating positions, and amassed into piles (e.g. the inhuman pyramid sculpture), and not just to "soften them up" for interrogation. They are degraded in this precise manner in order to make it visible, to put it in circulation, to make it communicate.

The US soldiers in the photos, with their smiles, thumbs-up gestures, and green gloves look all too much like sculptors proud to have finished their most recent piece. Along with the female soldier's repetitive pointing and cigarettes, these characteristics make it seem like we're looking at a behind-the-scenes "making of" the Torture series gallery opening. Anchoring this is "hooded figure on a box with electrodes ". This haunting hybrid of cyborg wizard and sacrificed Christ predicts one possible avenue for anti-war art. If Mel Gibson's recent film is any harbinger, the garish depiction of degradation is a crowd pleaser. One could easily imagine a performance piece that mimicked the hooded figure, either in a gallery or as a substitute for those silver painted human statues on city streets.

To call this series of photos and practices an exercise in military S/M is a misnomer. Masochism implies, even demands, a subject who can actively desire to become an abject other. These aesthetics are pure sadism, denuding the other of identity, humanity, desire, and power. This is an umitigated will to deprive, carefully staged and gleefully promoted. Call it instead the latest development in still-life, or more precisely the grand unveiling of "the stole(n)-life series."

Many historians, cultural critics and film analysts have remarked on how the Nazis aestheticized glory and triumphalism as a means of mobilizing people. What do we make of the staging of humiliation and sculpting of disappearance? Moral denunciation of the pictures is not enough. This has already been co-opted by Bush, Blair, and former supervisor Janis Karpinski, who have indicated being sickened and disgusted by the photos. One does have to wonder, however, how shocking images work to move or to paralyze their viewers. Let us not forget that it has only been two months since an exposed breast on live television mobilized tens of thousands to call for restrictions and penalties for those responsible. Where is that sense of shock and awe today?

We can see that the power of images lies not only in their ability to reveal secrets. The Abu Ghraib images are not exposing something hidden, since as Stephen Soldz documents in his Znet essay, we have had the information on a variety of these detention atrocities over the last year. Instead of putting an end to the secret rituals of degradation, the pictures' garish revelations are creating even more mystery. As the Korean vet acknowledged, extreme acts of depravity towards others during combat is hardly a secret. However, to continue believing in the just cause of any war, the public is required to forget this fact, making wartime atrocities one of our most public secrets. Turning that public secret into art is a profound development in the craft of psywar and in the aestheticization of politics.