Judith Butler Torture and the Ethics of Photography Review

Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? | Sexual Politics, Torture, and Secular Time | Summary

Cardinal Takeaways

• Butler examines the notion of modernity and contests the belief that certain groups of people are more "modern" than others or have advanced more than others within the aforementioned frame of time.
• Understanding of progress and existence politically "progressive" per Butler are built upon a misguided notion that time and progress are somehow entwined and that the progression of time leads inevitably to progress. Butler sees some notions of progress and democracy as not being a positive affair at all but rather serving only to further exacerbate marginalization.
• Butler considers a one-time role of the Dutch immigration exam which was required for certain individuals seeking to immigrate to the Netherlands. Examinees looked at a film of 2 men kissing and were asked whether they accepted such public displays of homosexual amore. Butler explains that this might seem aimed at perpetuating "progressive" values and an openness and acceptance for all simply really it sought to discriminate against Muslim immigrants whose organized religion bars homosexuality.
• A practice like the ane used in kingdom of the netherlands calls into question for Butler whether or not certain practices that at first announced to promote individual liberty of expression might actually serve to discriminate against certain cultural or religious groups.
• An understanding of Islam beingness anachronistic, astern, or "non-modern" is prevalent in the Unites States and Europe per Butler. This beguiling understanding must be challenged.
• In France debate over fatherhood, kinship, and homosexual parenting abounds according to Butler. She explains that some French psychologists assert that homosexual parenting leads to "the risk of producing a psychotic child." French politicians also present ideas almost the need for a male person father effigy to impart masculinity. Butler sees the efforts of the French country to establish "norms of adulthood" and norms of citizenship that rest on familial relationships to be the way patriarchal norms are perpetuated through the state appliance.
• Butler challenges the work of Pope Benedict Sixteen (b. 1927) who was then the leader of the Cosmic Church. She refers to him by his given name Joseph Alois Ratzinger. She finds his opinion that the human family requires "two detached sexes" every bit well every bit his belief that Islam is a religion that has brought just things that are "evil and inhuman" to be wrong. She points out that historically Christianity is the religion that has done the nearly "inhuman" things like forced conversions whereas Islamic nations served every bit a safe haven for Jews kicked out of Christian nations.
• Fifty-fifty in her staunch critique of certain religious beliefs, Butler does non precisely phone call for secularism which is the separation from religion in public life. The problem for Butler is rooted much more deeply and information technology transcends both spheres. Certain religious beliefs are arbitrarily considered more "modern" than others according to Butler. She explains that many people in the Us believe that Christianity is modern and that Islam is backward which is an idea that Butler vehemently disagrees with.
• According to Butler Americans have a conventionalities in a single, unified "Arab mind" and this conventionalities is what led to the specific torture acts against Muslims because the acts were designed to be upsetting to this unmarried "Arab" worldview. Butler explains no single "Arab mind" exists.
• Butler finds telling the particular acts used by the US war machine to torture detainees at Abu Ghraib which was an American prison for Iraqi war criminals located in Iraq. On 1 hand they are used specifically because they counter taboos "in relation to homosexuality, exposure, masturbation, and nudity" prevelant in Muslim culture. On the other manus, the acts seek to utilise "sexual freedom" in participating in these acts to coerce, humiliate, and subordinate. In Butler'due south opinion the United States is attempting to utilise freedom to engage in these sexual practice acts, to coerce, and to torture in an attempt to humiliate those it sees equally opposed to American ideals of "freedom."
• Butler concludes by explaining that the use of what she considers "barbarism" by the Usa in order to "acculturate" a population deemed astern must be contested "at every turn."

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