ABU GHRAIB AS A SEX SCANDAL: THE SEXUAL AND VISUAL POLITICS OF NEOLIBERALISM
Open AccessThis project employs a discursive approach that combines a socio-historical interrogation of the politics of production and consumption of sex scandal discourse with "scandal storytelling," a technique distinguished by an analytical focus on sexual norms, institutional operations and the relations of the news media. Specifically, my analysis is focused on the visual and sexual politics of the media coverage and public response to the military sex scandal commonly referred to as Abu Ghraib within a neoliberal context. The purpose of this project is to address a gap in current academic scholarship regarding the sexual and visual politics of neoliberalism. The sexual politics of neoliberalism are generally characterized by complex relationships between the economic and the socio-sexual within a matrix of institutional power and individual agency that are understudied and generally unacknowledged . Furthermore, there is very little discussion of the ways in which sexual politics are communicated and how it materializes in the U.S. With an emphasis on the role of the state in the regulation and policing of public discourses of sexuality, I apply an analysis of the production and consumption of sex scandals in the United States to interrogate the relationship between sexual and visual politics of neoliberalism. Specifically, I analyze the ways in which desire, taboo and fantasy are policed in media coverage and public reaction to the Abu Ghraib military sex scandal in an effort to understand how sex scandals function in a public culture of sex.
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