Culture concept and sex ίπ the Abu Ghraib scandal

Abstract

ln staging the torture of lraqi prisoners, U.S. military forces at Abu Ghraib prison drew on a series of cultural truisms regarding
the sexual practices of ιιArabs»: the purported source for these ideas was The Arab Mind, a 1973 book by Raphael Patai, which
recycles generations of Orientalist stereotypes. ln this paper, Ι consider how the reiteration of this ahistorical knowledge of
"Arab sex" , ίn media coνerage of the scandal deflected attention from the particular historical conjuncture in which the boundaries
between the American occupier and the lraqi 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 techno/ogies (i.e. digitized voyeurism, mass dissemination of images with JPEGs, the lnternet, and digital photography)
through which discourses on sex and embodied forms of pleasure and pain were being produced.