Field Guide for Female Interrogators

The world was shocked by the images that emerged from the Abu Ghraib scandal. Lynndie England, the young female army officer shown smiling devilishly as she humiliated male prisoners, became first a scapegoat and then a victim who was "just following orders." Ignored were the more elemental question [...]
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The world was shocked by the images that emerged from the Abu Ghraib scandal. Lynndie England, the young female army officer shown smiling devilishly as she humiliated male prisoners, became first a scapegoat and then a victim who was "just following orders." Ignored were the more elemental questions of how women are functioning within conservative power structures of government and the military. Why do the military and the CIA use female sexuality as an interrogation tactic, and why is this tactic downplayed and even ignored in internal investigations of prisoner abuse?Combining an art project with critical commentary, Coco Fusco imaginatively addresses the role of women in the war on terror and explores how female sexuality is being used as a weapon against suspected Islamic terrorists. Using details drawn from actual accounts of detainee treatment in US military prisons, Fusco conceives a field guide of instructional drawings that prompts urgent questions regarding the moral dilemma of torture in general and more specifically about how female sexuality is used. Finally, Fusco assesses what these matters suggest about how the military and the state make use of sex, sexuality, and originally feminist notions of sexual freedom.Coco Fusco is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer. She is the author of "English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas," and editor of "Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas" and "Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self" (with Brian Wallis). A recipient of a 2003 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, she is an associate professor at Columbia University.