Cultural conditions rather than rogue individuals produced Abu Ghraib torture

Evidence

As I do, Giroux rejects the argument that what went on at Abu Ghraib was the work of a few bad apples, although he still considers that special conditions prevailing in Iraq pushed soldiers to the brink and he believes that the torture is simply culturally specific torture. Recognizing that the photos reveal something about collective will, however, Giroux explores where soldiers learned the identities they enacted at Abu Ghraib. The ‘pedagogical conditions’ that produced Abu Ghraib have something to do with ‘discourses of privatization, particularly the contracting of military labor, the intersection of militarism and the crisis of masculinity, the war on terrorism, and the racism that makes it so despicable.’ Specifically, the media’s celebration of violence, hegemonic masculinity with its insistence on ‘masculine hardness’ against feminine softness, and market fundamentalism all combined in a ‘furious jingoistic patriotism’ that is evident in these acts of torture. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 151

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘few bad apples’ versus systemic explanations debate — akin to Milgram/banality-of-evil literature and Baradaran’s or Zimbardo’s work on situational force. — connects to: Abu Ghraib photographs revealed American culture’s dependence on the sexual-humiliation equation. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 194; US officials instrumentalized racist Arab caricatures to design torture regimes — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 194; The Arab Mind’s homogenizing caricature was instrumentalized to design US torture. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 206
• SEED: Angle: Giroux’s ‘pedagogical conditions’ framework maps neatly onto how institutional training and media indoctrinate violence — a piece on what ‘education for critical citizenship’ after mass atrocity could actually look like.