Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib, and the New Imperialism

Abstract

Abstract: This is an examination of the official reaction by the Bush administration to the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the coverage of the story by mainstream American media. By doing so, the authors seek to explain the emergence of what in retrospect became a metanarrative about Abu Ghraib that limited debate and public understanding to a narrow range of questions about individual moral culpability. Attention will be given to how the story was framed, in both its emphases and silences, and particularly to how it came to be remembered. In the case of Abu Ghraib, the spectacle of the same set of photographs shown repeatedly kept the focus on individual perpetrators and the morality of their behaviour, creating a narrative limited to the actions of a few individuals. This metanarrative allowed Americans to exempt themselves from confronting race and the racialized violence that structures both the discourse and the practice of the so called “war on terror.”