Blog Prompt 4: Spectacle, Imperialism, & Visual Nationalism

By 9 pm on Thursday September 30, please post a 600-word (min) response to ONE OR MORE of the following prompts:

1. In “On Torture: Abu Ghraib,” what does Jasbir Puar argue regarding the construction of the imperial body in the context of the Abu Ghraib photos? Do you see Puar’s argument at work in Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure? Do the interviews demonstrate any examples of the construction of such corporealities?

2. In "A Strange and Bitter Crop: The Spectacle of Torture," Hazel Carby argues that the photographs of torture at Abu Ghraib build on a long history of U.S. popular visual culture rendering the tortured body of color an object of national spectacle through which white national identity is secured. In what ways do you see this legacy at work in other forms of U.S. visual culture? How does such imagery articulate the ways racial, gender, and/or sexual norms of visuality circumscribe which bodies are constructed as human?

3. How does Standard Operating Procedure present various photographs (the photos of sunsets, of Rumsfeld, of U.S. soldiers, of abuse and violence)? What is the effect of the white frame and black background that appears around each photo that is shown? What argument is Morris making about the relation of the photographs of torture and the other photographs?