When women torture

Small manual of torture for the use of women-schools: this is not exactly what is given to us to read. The manual exists well, but it holds in a very short text and some images, at the end of the book. Most of the work is entitled “ Extension of the woman’s domain ». Coco Fusco continues a reflection started during the performance it created in 2006, “ A Room of One’s Own: Women and Power in the New America ». For this artist, it is a question of extending the shock of photos out of the American prison of Abu Ghraib where American women, in lattice, posed before naked, tortured, even dead Iraqi prisoners. These images of humiliation, where the image became an element of the mechanism of destruction of the other, went around the world very quickly, finishing to ruin any discourse on the merits of the American presence in Iraq.

However, there is not the purpose of Coco Fusco. From this case which revealed the cowardice of the command structure as much as its involvement in the violence perpetrated on the Iraqi suspects (as, moreover, on the internees of Guantanamo), the artist retains only an aspect, which has passed almost unnoticed: they are women who torture and humiliate, women who violate men. Of course, the size of the genre was not erased in the United States when the scandal broke out. In reality, it was even part of the subtle euphemization and excuse system which then set up. Let us remember that once the denial phase passed, the American authorities have set out to show that the responsibility was limited to the actors photographed and to one of their managers ; In this case, the one who had under her command the American prisons in Iraq, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski. Unique woman in this area of ​​war, she quickly became the ideal scapegoat, demoted some time later. Next to the soldiers of the military police, whose proletarian aspect, not very cultivated, even retarded, was found, we had thus found the chief who could carry the hat: the shock wave would be limited, the tortures reduced to a simple burr. The soldiers themselves could then-ironic reversal-being presented as simple subordinates, poor victims.

Women and soldiers

That the American detention system in Iraq, like the war carried out in this country, makes it possible to think that these were absolutely not burrs, but a system of humiliation validated in high places and designed from a certain conception of the enemy – terrorist, Arabic and Muslim -, is probably no doubt to be demonstrated. On the other hand, that the women soldiers played, in this system, a specific role could still be enlightened: this is what Coco Fusco proposes.

Of course, we could emphasize that Lynndie England and Sabrina Harman have become real characters in the history of war in Iraq. One could recall how the American authorities viciously instilled the idea that these photos were the emerged part of an iceberg of horrors, that they were only little next to what could have been shown to an audience quickly frightened. Using the psychological weapon towards its own electorate, the American government always suggested, without ever admitting, and tried to pass these photos for unimportant things. That these photos were immediately reproduced, that they have found replicas painted on the walls of many Muslim countries and in particular in Iran, is not the subject of this little book. Far from geopolitics and far from Iraq finally, Coco Fusco looks at his country and what these photos have shown room that women still have, especially in the army. Indeed, Lynndie England and Sabrina Harman are not “ torture minettes »» ; They are not the dark side of women soldiers in Iraq, where Jessica Lynch would embody light, heroism but also weakness. Coco Fusco’s words overthrows this comforting thought: these women are female soldiers and as such – women and soldiers – they fully participate in the American military system. What these photos have revealed is a facet of the new American army, which does not use women as other volunteers. The army knows how to use individuals for their own qualities and women for their membership of a specific sex makes it possible to obtain.

To be convinced, Coco Fusco praised the services of former American interrogation specialists, who proliferate in the United States. With some female accomplices, she did an internship with them for three days. She wanted to test the idea that a female recruit is not trained in the same way as a man to question suspects. The experience was conclusive: the bodies – of the one who questioned like the one who is questioned – are essential. She pulled a small film and the material from her performance, some of which are provided to us at the end of the book (this is the manual proper). By touching, postures causing prisoners, by obscene gestures on themselves or on them, the women soldiers exploit during interrogations a range of attitudes ranging from the consoling woman to the pornographic actress, passing through the use of menstrual blood as a (supposed) impure weapon.

The role of soldiers, beyond egalitarian discourse

Revealing that women are used as women To torture male prisoners, Coco Fusco does not just break the mirror that the authorities tried to present to the Americans: no, the photos of Abu Ghraib did not constitute burrs or bad taste. These photos very clearly indicate that Iraqi suspects are perceived as men for whom being questioned by a woman would add a humiliating dimension to the situation and for whom, moreover, to be tortured by her would constitute the worst thing. Far from being small miseries inflicted by minets, these tortures claim to reach, faster perhaps and more effectively than tortures “ from man to man », The psychic knot on which tries to act all torturers – the one who, once reached, will help and let information, self -esteem and ability to resist. At least that is what those who implement these tortures believe.

This assertion remains in the domain of the conjecture as to its reality for the victims. On the other hand, what Coco Fusco just underlines is that thus the American army reveals not only the image she has of her opponents, but the image she has of women in her ranks and, undoubtedly, women in general. “” The characters of women who appear around these testimonies are all archetypes straight from American culture She writes clearly (p. 60). This is where the subject takes on a truly innovative dimension. The author indeed endeavors to denounce the biopvoyer at work in the military institution. Women have, in this perspective, the right to a specific treatment which, beyond an egalitarian discourse, reveals that they are perceived in a differentiated way, from a completely traditional gender perspective. The study of internal violence in the military institution, in particular rapes, could undoubtedly have shown the same thing.

But, by studying the practices revealed by the photos of Abu Ghraib, Coco Fusco upsets much more. Indeed, denouncing the sexual violence that the American army lets exercise in it could contribute to adding soldiers to the list of women victims of the violence of men or, less radically, of the violence of male domination. The subject is of importance and, if Coco Fusco does not dwell on it, there remains a formidable news.

However, taking an interest in torturers who attracts the look elsewhere, on an area to which many women and feminists like to think that they are foreign: that of violence. The text is, for this reason, composed as a letter to Virginia Woolf, iconic reference of feminist reflections on women and war. The book by Coco Fusco insists on what hurts and embarrassments loud and clear that women can be agents of war violence. This reality is, according to her, “ The manifest sign of instrumentalization by the state of sexual identity, sexuality and cultural difference (P. 63). The feminist perspective, in fact, is not abandoned: it is complicated and free from the great naivety which refers women to a peaceful nature, as well as that which includes them in a system of domination of which they would be the pure victims. Abu Ghraib is not proof that women have lost their innocence by entering the army, or that they are once again used and manipulated.

Coco Fusco offers to look at these women soldiers and torturers as full actresses of a system of male domination in which the dominant value is built not only compared to women but compared to other men, here Iraqi prisoners. Participating of their own alienation, American, white and blond women if possible, had all their role to play.