Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wpx84 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-21T22:24:32.140Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remaking/Unmaking: Abu Ghraib and Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Philip Metres
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

So now the pictures will continue to “assault” us—as many Americans are bound to feel. Will people get used to them? Some Americans are already saying that they have seen “enough.”

—Susan Sontag, “Regarding the Torture of Others”

… a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being makes before language is learned.

—Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain

When The ABU Ghraib Prison torture scandal began to circulate throughout The MASS media in Spring 2004, most pundits and commentators neglected to note how those images hauntingly paralleled the 9/11 attacks, insofar as each event's widespread publicity—replayed and reposted images of physical and psychological destruction—participated in the very unmaking that the perpetrators intended. In other words, just as the terrorist act on the Twin Towers was an act of both material and symbolic destruction that required media representation of the planes hitting the towers, mass media's recirculation of visual images of naked and dominated Iraqi men completed the act that Charles Graner and other United States military police had begun. Though the disturbing video representation of the 9/11 attacks rapidly disappeared from television, the Abu Ghraib photos persisted far longer (see York). The rapid disappearance of video of the planes striking the buildings suggests its traumatic power for Americans. But why would the Abu Ghraib photos be less disturbing than those of the attacks of September 11, 2001—given what they say about United States conduct in the war? In this essay, I consider the Abu Ghraib effect in the wider context of imperial imaging of the other. Second, I analyze artistic and literary responses (including Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib paintings, Daniel Heyman's etchings, and an anthology of poems on torture) that attempt to re-present Abu Ghraib and make visible the invisible of that torture. Third, I sketch out how Arab American poets have played (and can continue to play) a critical role in the conversation about the effects of United States policies in the Middle East. Finally, I share my own poetic project, a long poem called “–u –r—” that attempts to make audible the muted voices of the tortured Iraqis at Abu Ghraib.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 5: Special Topic Comparative Racialization , October 2008 , pp. 1596 - 1610
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Benjamin, Mark. “Salon Exclusive: The Abu Ghraib Files.” Salon.com. 16 Feb. 2006. 3 Jan. 2008 <http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/02/16/abu_ghraib/>.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” Andrew Feenberg's Home Page. 27 May 2008 <http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html>.Google Scholar
Berger, Rose Marie, and Ross, Joseph, eds. Cut Loose the Body: An Anthology of Poems on Torture and Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib Paintings. Washington: Amer. U Museum; DC Poets against the War, 2007.Google Scholar
Blanford, Nicholas. “Iraqi Artists Depict Anger over Abu Ghraib.” Christian Science Monitor 24 June 2004. 2 Jan. 2008 <http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0615/p07s01-woiq.html>.Google Scholar
Brown, Michelle. “‘Setting the Conditions’ for Abu Ghraib: The Prison Nation Abroad.” American Quarterly 57 (2005): 973–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carney, Tom. “Americans, Especially Catholics, Approve of Torture.” National Catholic Reporter 24 Mar. 2006. 3 Jan. 2008 <http://ncronline.org/NCR_online/archives2/2006a/032406/032406h.htm>.Google Scholar
Charara, Hayan, ed. Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry. Arkansas: U of Arkansas P, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danner, Mark. Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror. New York: New York Rev. of Books, 2004.Google Scholar
Danto, Arthur C. “The Body in Pain.” Nation 27 Nov. 2006. 3 Jan. 2008 <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061127/danto>..>Google Scholar
Darwish, Mahmoud. The Butterfly's Burden. Trans. Fady Joudah. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon, 2007.Google Scholar
David, Ebony. Botero: Abu Ghraib. New York: Prestel, 2006.Google Scholar
Eisenman, Stephen F. The Abu Ghraib Effect. London: Reaktion, 2007.Google Scholar
Empirical Legal Studies. “The Polls—Torture.” 18 Dec. 2007. 3 Jan. 2008 <http://www.elsblog.org/the_empirical_legal_studi/2007/12/the-polls-tor.html>..>Google Scholar
Forché, Carolyn, ed. Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poems of Witness. New York: Norton, 1993.Google Scholar
Freud, Anna. The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. Trans. Cecil Baines. New York: Intl. Univs. P, 1946.Google Scholar
The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. Dir. Rory Kennedy. HBO Documentary Film, 2006.Google Scholar
Handal, Nathalie, ed. The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology. New York: Interlink, 2001.Google Scholar
Hecht, Anthony. “More Light! More Light!” Anthology of Modern American Poetry. Ed. Nelson, Cary. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. 816–17.Google Scholar
Heyen, William, ed. September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond. Silver Springs: Etruscan, 2002.Google Scholar
Heyman, Daniel. “Excerpted from Daniel Heyman's Online Journal.” Daniel Heyman. 3 Jan. 2008 <http://www.danielheyman.com/press.htm>.Google Scholar
Kogon, Eugene. The Theory and Practice of Hell. 1950. New York: Farrar, 2006.Google Scholar
Metres, Philip. Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metres, Philip. “Lang/scape: Further Explorations of War Resistance Poetry in Public Spaces.” Big Bridge. Jan. 2008. 6 May 2008 <http://www.bigbridge.org/WAR-MET.HTM>..>Google Scholar
Metres, Philip. “–u –r—.” Unpublished ms.Google Scholar
Miliard, Mike. “Abu Ghraib as Art.” Boston Phoenix 26 July 2006. 3 Jan. 2008 <http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid18663.aspx>.Google Scholar
Mitchell, W. J. T. “The Unspeakable and the Unimaginable: Word and Image in a Time of Terror.” ELH 72.2 (2005): 291–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morin, Richard, and Deane, Claudia. “American Poll Shows Most Reject Torture.” Washington Post 29 May 2004. 3 Jan. 2008 <http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/28/1085641709708.html>.Google Scholar
Orfalea, Gregory, and Elmusa, Sharif, eds. Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab-American Poetry. 1988. New York: Interlink, 1999.Google Scholar
Rajiva, Lila. The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media. New York: Monthly Rev., 2005.Google Scholar
Rejali, Darius. “Of Human Bondage.” Salon.com. 18 June 2004. 27 May 2008 <http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2004/06/18/torture_methods/>..>Google Scholar
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Susan, Sontag. “Regarding the Torture of Others.” New York Times 23 May 2004. 6 May 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/magazine/23PRISONS.html?ex=1400644800&en=a2cb6ea6bd297c8f&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND>.Google Scholar
Standard Operating Procedure. Dir. Errol Morris. Sony, 2008.Google Scholar
York, Byron. “Taboo: Abu Ghraib Images Are One Thing. But 9/11? Off Limits.” National Review 26 July 2004. 3 Jan. 2008 <http:findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_14_56/ai_n13803108>.Google Scholar