Education after Abu Ghraib
2004; Routledge; Volume: 18; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0950238042000306873
ISSN1466-4348
Autores Tópico(s)Educational Philosophies and Pedagogies
ResumoAbstract Drawing upon Theodor Adorno's famous essay, 'Education After Auschwitz, 'this article examines the question of how education should be engaged in light of the abuse and torture by American soldiers and personnel that took place at Abu Ghraib prison. The essay attempts to understand not only how the photographs of abuse and torture signalled a particular form of public pedagogy, but also how pedagogy itself becomes central to understanding the changing political, ideological, and economic conditions that made the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib possible and what the latter implies for how we understand both cultural politics and the growing authoritarian nature of American society. Keywords: Abu Ghraibpublic pedagogycultural politicsresistanceAdornoAuschwitz Acknowledgments I want to thank Susan Giroux for her generous support and wonderful insights while I was researching and writing this article. Notes For an interesting comment on how the Bush media team attempted to enhance presidential persona through the iconography of conservative, hyped-up, macho-phallic masculinity, see Goldstein (). While I cannot name all of the relevant sources theorizing the ethical nature of torture or its use by the American military, some important recent contributions include: Hersh (), Danner () Danner () and Lewis (). See Pound and Roane (). Also see The Nation ( , p. 3). Degrading prisoners at Abu Ghraib had become so pervasive that forced nudity was seen as a commonplace phenomenon by both military personnel and detainees (see Zernike & Rohde , p. A11). The memo can be found online at: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=draft_memo_to_the_president_from_alberto_gonzales,_january_25,_2004 See chapter 1 of the manual, 'Interrogation and the Interrogator'. Available online: http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/policy/army/fm/fm34-52/chapter1.htm The level of secrecy employed by the Bush administration is both dangerous and absurd. For example, some individuals were shocked to learn that if they wanted to attend a rally hosted by Vice-President Dick Cheney at Rio Rancho Mid-High School in New Mexico the weekend of 30 July 2004, they could not get tickets to the rally unless they signed an endorsement pledging allegiance to President George W. Bush (see Jones , p. 1). I take up many of these issues in greater detail in Giroux (). For an excellent discussion of this issue, see Lucaites and McDaniel (), pp. 1–28). This issue is taken up brilliantly in Solomon-Godeau (). This was first presented as a radio lecture on 18 April 1966, under the title 'Padagogik nack Auschwitz'. The first published version appeared in 1967. The English translation appears in Adorno (). Some might argue that I am putting forward a view of Adorno that is a bit too optimistic. However, I think that Adorno's political pessimism, given his own experience of fascism, which under the circumstances seems entirely justified to me, should not be confused with his pedagogical optimism, which provides some insight into why he could write the Auschwitz essay in the first place. Even Adorno's ambivalence about what education could actually accomplish does not amount to an unadulterated pessimism as much as a caution about recognizing the limits of education as an emancipatory politics. Adorno wanted to make sure that individuals recognized those larger structures of power outside of traditional appeals to education while clinging to critical thought as the precondition but not absolute condition of individual and social agency. I want to thank Larry Grossberg for this distinction. I also want to thank Roger Simon and Imre Szeman for their insightful comments on Adorno's politics and pessimism. On the relationship between prisons and schools, see Giroux (). On the intellectual diversity issue, see Lazere (), pp. B15–B16). George Smith refers to one programme in which a woman was tied up in a clear box while some eager males 'dumped a few hundred tarantulas onto her… you can hear the screaming and crying from her and the witnesses. Some guy is vomiting. This is critical, because emptying the contents of the stomach is great TV. Everyone else is laughing and smirking, just like our good old boys and girls at Abu Ghraib' (Smith ). This issue is take up with great insight and compassion in Lifton (). I take up this issue in great detail in Giroux (). One of the best books examining this issue is McChesney's () Rich Media, Poor Democracy. Constructions of the impoverished other have a long history in American society, including more recent manifestations that extend from the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to the increasing incarceration of young black and brown men in 2004. Of course, they cannot be explained entirely within the discourse of capitalist relations. The fatal combination of chauvinism, militarism and racism has produced an extensive history of photographic images in which depraved representations such as blacks hanging from trees or skulls of 'Japanese soldiers jammed onto a tank exhaust pipe as a trophy' depict a xenophobia far removed from the dictates of objectified consumerism (see Lucaites & McDaniel , p. 4, and Bauman (). This issue is taken up brilliantly in Bauman (). I want to illustrate this point with a comment taken from an Israeli soldier about his experience in Hebron: I was ashamed of myself the day I realized that I simply enjoy the feeling of power. I don't believe in it: I think this is not the way to do anything to anyone, surely not to someone who has done nothing to you, but you can't help but enjoy it. People do what you tell them. You know it's because you carry a weapon. Knowing that if you didn't have it, and if your fellow soldiers weren't beside you, they would jump on you, beat the shit out of you, and stab you to death – you begin to enjoy it. Not merely enjoy it, you need it. And then, when someone suddenly says 'No' to you, what do you mean no' Where do you draw the chutzpah from, to say no to me? … I remember a very specific situation: I was at a checkpoint, a temporary one, a so-called strangulation checkpoint, it was a very small checkpoint, very intimate, four soldiers, no commanding officer, no protection worthy of the name, a true moonlighting job, blocking the entrance to a village. From one side a line of cars wanting to get out, and from the other side a line of cars wanting to pass, a huge line, and suddenly you have a mighty force at the tip of your fingers, as if playing a computer game. I stand there like this, pointing at someone, gesturing to you to do this or that, and you do this or that, the car starts, moves toward me, halts beside me. The next car follows, you signal, it stops. You start playing with them, like a computer game. You come here, you go there, like this. You barely move, you make them obey the tip of your finger. It's a might feeling. It's something you don't experience elsewhere. You know it's because you have a weapon, you know it's because you are a soldier, you know all this, but its addictive. When I realized this … I checked in with myself to see what had happened to me. That's it. And it was a big bubble that burst. I thought I was immune, that is, how can someone like me, a thinking, articulate, ethical, moral man – things I can attest to about myself as such. Suddenly, I notice that I am getting addicted to controlling people. I want to thank Roger Simon for this insight and for his making available to me the transcript from which this quote is taken. See 'Soldiers Speak Out About Their Service in Hebron'. Available at www.shovrimshtika.org
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