The U.S. War on Terror and Its Obscene Double

The Parallax View

This thread traces the conflict between public claims of law and the concealed practices of coercion revealed by Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

increasing

Bearing strength in each event

decreasing

The Public Justification The Public Justification from "The Parallax View". Security Becomes an Absolute Demand A threatened public order The War on Terror is framed as a defense of freedom and security against an invisible enemy.

The Public Justification from "The Parallax View". Security Becomes an Absolute Demand A threatened public order The War on Terror is framed as a defense of freedom and security against an invisible enemy.

Security Becomes an Absolute Demand A threatened public order The War on Terror is framed as a defense of freedom and security against an invisible enemy. The threat is powerful partly because it lacks a fixed location. Emergency expands The state presents exceptional measures as protection of ordinary law. The book asks how this logic can itself endanger the freedoms it invokes.

Prisoners Outside Ordinary Law

Legal Status Suspended A zone of exception Detainees at Guantánamo are held in a space where ordinary legal protections are weakened or withheld. They remain physically alive while their political status is suspended. The human-rights paradox Those most in need of rights become difficult to represent as rights-bearing subjects. The exception reveals a problem within the legal order itself.

Abu Ghraib Photographs Surface

Torture Becomes a Public Image Recorded humiliation Photographs show Iraqi prisoners staged in degrading poses by American guards. The camera is not incidental: recording the abuse becomes part of its humiliating force. The official response Authorities initially treat the acts as isolated misconduct. Reports of abuse had already been raised, making the public explanation inadequate.

The Obscene Code Emerges The Obscene Code Emerges from "The Parallax View". Beyond Individual Misconduct An unofficial practice The book reads the torture as linked to unspoken rules and pressures rather than direct written orders.

The Obscene Code Emerges from "The Parallax View". Beyond Individual Misconduct An unofficial practice The book reads the torture as linked to unspoken rules and pressures rather than direct written orders.

Beyond Individual Misconduct An unofficial practice The book reads the torture as linked to unspoken rules and pressures rather than direct written orders. Public values coexist with an obscene supplement that the institution disavows. Responsibility widens This does not erase individual culpability. It makes the organization and its implicit permissions part of the explanation.

The Domestic Underside The Domestic Underside from "The Parallax View". Violence Returns Home Familiar cultural forms The poses in the images recall humiliating initiations and coercive rituals in American popular and institutional…

The Domestic Underside from "The Parallax View". Violence Returns Home Familiar cultural forms The poses in the images recall humiliating initiations and coercive rituals in American popular and institutional…

Violence Returns Home Familiar cultural forms The poses in the images recall humiliating initiations and coercive rituals in American popular and institutional life. The prisoners are made to encounter an obscene underside of the society that claims to defend them. The clash is internal The scandal is not simply a clash between civilized America and foreign barbarism. It exposes a contradiction within American power itself.

After September 11, 2001

During the early War on Terror

April–May 2004

After the photographs become public

Chapter 6, analysis of the scandal