Here’s the transcript of my interview with Homi Bhabha…. It’s 7000 words long, broken into five pages… and it’s pretty much the full transcript. The only thing I don’t transcribe is ums and ahs.
When I’ve finished my thesis, I think I’ll add a new section to my site with articles and interviews, like the transcript of the DJ Spooky and Golan Levin interview that I never posted.
Meanwhile, if you’re rushed for time, just read this bit.
RB: Which leads me to ask what you think about what just happened in Abu Ghraib?
HB: Well, I think this is one of the most important and forgotten political and ethical issues in moments such as the ones we are living in, is always to ask yourself, how does the violence outside, whether it’s a just war or not, how does it affect the soul of the society within? This was a question that Jean Paul Sartre put to the French people during the Algerian war. The practice in the name of your country, the practice of violence outside, there may be circumstances in which it is necessary, I don’t want to suggest that it isn’t, I think you can take a pacifist position, I think that’s also a very well considered position, but if you use violence of this kind where you lock up people irrespective of who they are based purely on the sense of fear and anxiety, if you think you can do that when you are involved outside of your own country in a campaign of violence, even if it can be justified in certain ways, you always have to ask yourself, what is it doing within my own country, within my own culture, to my own people? And I think people don’t ask those questions enough. They project outside but they don’t question within. And I think that’s the main issue. And I think what’s happened recently is what’s been feared all along. And it’s part of a continuüm.
There’s Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and they’re not the same thing and I don’t want to suggest they are but they have to be seen in relation to each other because I think in some way the same legal principle applies that people who are not represented are locked up and once they’re locked up they become the subject of the most sadistic practices in the name of security. So do you see where security now becomes a cultural issue? We are not here talking about the questioning of these people.
I think any society, any country, however much it feels itself pushed, if it resorts to torture, even selectively, is putting itself, the moral and political fabric of its own country, in great danger. I know there is an argument afoot now, a long article in last week’s New York Sunday Times by Michael Ignatieff on the whole notion of the lesser evil. This is an argument now: if you feel you have to resort to torture now, under certain circumstances, to be able to uncover a major terrorist attack, isn’t that the lesser evil? And I think, you know, in the world in which we live, this argument should be made and we should actually have to think about it. But we should think about it very hard. And we cannot think about it if groups of people are locked up and kept outside of any surveillance or security. And by that I’m talking about the prisoners who are outside of a benevolent surveillance force and also the jailers. So in that situation you cannot even begin to debate what is a lesser evil. So there must be a much greater disclosure for us to even participate in such a discussion.
But my earlier point about the whole notion of security, leading to developing a cultural edge, is very apparent here, these prisoners were made to perform, to simulate I assume, sexual acts and were then photographed in that position with the knowledge that these particular acts were repugnant to the culture. Now, whether this was a stereotype of what it means for men to be naked together in that culture, I don’t know, because it would be quite easy to suggest that for the average Westerner, the idea of homoerotic acts among Muslim males is the worst kind of thing in the world and I’m sure that on the other side, the Muslim world wouldn’t stand up and say anything different, they’d say it is repugnant. One way or another, the important issue really here is that there was a deliberate use of the violation of certain ethical, moral, religious and cultural practices and violation of that to humiliate people.
The other question then is why were the photographs made? And the videos? The first part of this is the use of certain cultural aspects as part of a political project of humiliation and governance if you like. The other side of it is my second argument. That such acts always reflect back on the culture itself. So what is this whole culture of taking photographs of people in humiliated and sexually deeply compromised positions without their consent and making representations of it. I think people in cultural studies should be studying these issues: what is that a mirror of? These photographs and these videos, what do they mirror? It’s got nothing to do with the prisoners. They mirror something about the institution of the army, they mirror something about militarisation, they mirror something about the uses of pornography without consent, that’s the issue, I’m not against pornography if there is consent, but the uses and the creation of pornography without consent. And I think it says, don’t you, a lot about the society for whom these photographs and videos were made, don’t you?
RB: Absolutely.
HB: The vicarious, voyeuristic violence. And of course, you know, it’s violent pornography, it’s a billion dollar business in the world. I don’t even want to say Western or non-Western, just in the world today.
[ends]
I just find this fascinating, especially after today’s revelations that there is pornography of Lindy whatever-her-name-is, the pregnant torturer soldier, having sex with “a number of American men” as well as posed images of her with naked prisoners in compromising positions.