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Torture, sex and military orientalism

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 17:42 authored by Patricia Owens
This article revisits the debate about recent American torture practices, particularly the use of discredited anthropological texts to validate long-held Orientalist assumptions about the sexual vulnerability of Muslim males. Such practices are placed in an historical context of older imperial constructions of sexually deviant Muslims as well as of more general forms of gendered and sexual subordination required for war. American torturers intended to produce very particular objects of torture - ones willing and able to confess their 'true' orientation in terms of a binary hetero/homo sexual code established in 19th-century Europe. The torturers had the power to confirm through confession and re-enactment their crude assumptions, irrespective of the actual sexualities of those being tortured, with consequences for the transnational and reactionary politics of sexual identity.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Third World Quarterly

ISSN

0143-6597

Publisher

Routledge

Issue

7

Volume

31

Page range

1041-1056

Department affiliated with

  • International Relations Publications

Notes

Reprinted in Tarak Barkawi and Keith Stanski (eds.) Orientalism and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp.239-256.

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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