Imperial domination is enacted through sexualized racial violence involving both sexes

Evidence

The violence inflicted on prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by both male and female American soldiers was both widespread and very clearly sexualized. A pyramid of naked male prisoners forced to simulate sodomy conveyed graphically that the project of empire – the West’s domination of the non-West – required strong infusions of a violent heterosexuality and patriarchy. The image of Private Lyndie England grinning and pointing her finger to the genitals of naked Iraqi prisoners confirmed that participation in sexualized racial violence and humiliation crossed gender lines. The photos, reportedly numbering in the thousands, shocked the white Western public, if not the non-white and non-Western one, the latter having had the advantage of recent and ongoing colonial experience. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 143

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s broader thesis about racialized violence and colonial logic; echoes Foucault/Clastres discussions of sovereign power and spectacle elsewhere in the reading list.
• SEED: Angle: the ‘non-Western public wasn’t shocked’ observation — the epistemic privilege of colonial experience — could anchor an essay on who gets to be scandalized by empire’s violence.