[lbo-talk] Abu Ghraib / Robert Mapplethorpe

Jon Johanning jjohanning at igc.org
Sat May 22 07:28:52 PDT 2004


On Friday, May 21, 2004, at 09:31 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> The subtext in question is the idea that the main problem of torture
> of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib is that it was sexual and therefore
> "particularly humiliating in 'Arab culture,'" rather than the presence
> of compulsion and absence of consent that distinguish rape and torture
> from consensual acts of sex in any culture.

Where "subtext," I suppose, means "something no one has actually said, but which you can 'read into' what people have said and then say that is really what they meant, and thus smear them."

God, I love postmodernism!

Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

-- Sir John Vanbrugh: The Provok’d Wife (1697), I.i.



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