Archive for impressions

Joan Shaffer | December 12, 2010
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Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure: Photographic Representations as Computerized Data

In April of 2004, 60 Minutes II and journalist Seymour Hersh published photographs taken by soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 372nd Military Police Company at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The photographs included images of smiling American soldiers flashing the thumbs-up sign, while naked and hooded Iraqi detainees were forced to wear dog leashes and lingerie, stand in stress positions, perform simulated sexual acts, and construct human pyramids naked. Prior to the publication of the photographs, the Army had investigated suspected reports of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. The result was a condemning chronicle of detainee abuse known as the Taguba report. The photographs, however, became the focus of the scandal not the report. From the Rose Garden, President George W. Bush addressed the photographs: “It’s a stain on our country’s honor and our country’s reputation. I am sickened by what I saw and sickened that people got the wrong impression” (“Bush’s Abuse Apology”). At the Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld explained that the photos “give these incidents a vividness, indeed a horror, in the eyes of the world” (“Rumsfeld Testifies”). The administration also warned the public that more photographs and videos would likely surface. For the administration the photographs were the problem not the systemic conditions that produced them.

Through a series of portrait interviews, computer-generated imagery, and slow motion reenactments that mimic still photography, Errol Morris’ documentary Standard Operating Procedure attempts to reveal the story that lay beyond the viewfinder’s framing of the Abu Ghraib prison photographs. The film neither condemns nor exonerates the soldiers, but rather poses the question: what do we expect of photography, specifically digital photograph? Photography, as the film presents, has been reduced to computerized data, no longer able to create the existential “wound” that print photography once forwarded. This is accentuated by the account provided by a U.S. Army criminal investigator charged with sorting and analyzing the metadata of the prison photographs. Essentially, the military used this metadata to evaluate whether or not the Abu Ghraib prison photographs represented a crime or military standard operating procedures. What this type of reading and evaluation of metadata has essentially done is remove affect from photographic representations, as significance is measured in relation to a larger network of computerized data. In doing so, the problematic addressed by the film is how our desire for truth in photography is undermined when computerized data affords the US government and military a certain amount of distance and responsibility from the events that took place at Abu Ghraib prison.

Photography lingers between document and monument—between art and science, evidence and reminders, collecting and storing. Due to the mechanical nature of the camera, photographs are commonly thought of as granting us access to reality—to the real. In film-based photography, light is reflected off an object and is then chemically fixed onto a film support; it is a chemical record of what stood before the camera’s field of vision. Roland Barthes explored the indexical or causal relation to the referent in Camera Lucida: A Reflections on Photography. For Barthes, the photograph’s physical referent is not the same as other systems of representation, because, he explains, we cannot “deny that the thing has been there” (76). This causal relation is the reason photography is privileged over other forms of representational arts. That the photograph documents a physical trace of its subject corresponds to the belief that the photograph is evidence of reality: it is proof that the subject or object was indeed there at that particular moment in time. Since the photographic image is attached to a particular moment in time, we consider photographs as a remainder and reminder of what was once before the camera lens.

Much of what we know of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison is attributed to Specialist Sabrina Harmon’s photographs and letters written to her fiancée back home. In the film, soft-spoken Harmon claims that she took photographs in order to document the prison abuse. For Harmon, the photographs provided access to the “realities” of war. During the interview, Harmon explains that her obsession with forensic investigation motivated her to be where the action was so she could capture photographic evidence. Without the photographs, she suggests, nobody would believe her (Standard Operating Procedure).
The technical process of image making supports the impression of an authentic depiction of “reality,” even though the image’s composition was crafted. However, in “Photography, Vision, and Representation” Joel Synder and Neil Walsh Allen point out that photography should not be privileged over other art forms as a true index of reality. By focusing on the production of photographic images, Synder and Allen remind us that the image is dependent upon the intentional choices of a producer, such choices include, lighting, exposure, and point of view (151). These choices undermine the documentary authority granted to photography. And yet, the commonplace uses of photographs as evidence, identification, and memento illustrate the authority still ascribed to photography.

The proliferation of digital capture devices has led to a cultural obsession with immediacy, recording, and social broadcasting. Digital photographs can be easily uploaded to a web photo gallery, emailed, or burned to a disk for distribution. In our broadcast culture, image making becomes a performance not only acting before the camera, but also for the audience of potential observers. The photograph of PFC Lynndie England holding a leash attached to the detainee nicknamed Gus is an example of soldiers mugging it up for the camera. England explains that had it not been for the presence of the camera, the photograph would not exist. When asked to postulate Sergeant Charles Graner’s reasons for staging the photographs, she says:
A 95-100lb. female, short female at that, holdin’ a tie-strap that is attached to his neck…I’m dominating him. Maybe that’s what Graner was going for. Maybe it was for documentation. Maybe it was for his own amusement. I don’t know. I don’t know what was going through his head…but he took it (Standard Operating Procedure).
Indeed much of the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison were staged for the camera and distributed for amusement or trophies of war.

The contemporary shift from analog to digital photography has renewed questions about indexicality and the indeterminacy of meaning. The film signals this with CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) sequences presenting the Abu Ghraib photographs as a cascade of binary code. Digits are shuffled and then reconstituted as a photographic image, highlighting the peculiar arrangement of digital imaging; that is, we don’t know exactly what we are looking at when looking at digital images. Unlike film-based photography’s continuous tone tracing of a referent, the digital involve data that can be easily altered, copied, and abstracted from its source. Indeed, to the human eye, the visual structure of a digital image is intact—we see representation. However, what we don’t see, what is concealed from the human eye, is the numeric language of computer data—the binary 1s and 0s. This numeric substitution has, in essence, turned a tracing of “reality” into data. What was once a chemical record is now a virtual recording of data. The digital camera converts light into electrical charges (electrons). As light hits the sensor (a charge-coupled device), a semiconductor absorbs photons, which then emits an electrical charge with different intensities. A circuit board then assigns the charges with a digital value in binary form. The binary system of 1s and 0s make up the pixels that construct the images we see.

Computers afford a sense of human dominance over the image. In Language of New Media Lev Manovich explains “by turning an image into a mathematical object, digital computers gave us a new metalanguage for images—numbers. Building on such simple statistics, a computer can also tease out some indications of image structure and semantics—for instance, it can easily automatically find most edges in a photograph and sometimes even segment it into parts corresponding to individual objects” (Metadata). The prospect of looking into and altering the internal dynamics of an image presents the notion that we can know and ultimately control its structure. However, this structure is based on computer conventions of media flow according to file type distribution. We may feel we can read the language, but as Manovich points out “these dimension belong to the computer’s own cosmogony rather than human culture”(45-6).
Special Agent Brent Pack, lead forensic examiner of the computer crime unit of the Army Criminal Investigative Division (CID), was charged with sorting, analyzing, and categorizing depictions of detainee abuse. Pack used the camera’s metadata—information that describes, explains, and organizes computerized data—to assess the photographs. Digital cameras and computers automatically record metadata, such as aperture, shutter speed, exposure, lens, location, file type, and the time, day, and year the image was taken. Now, with common workflow software we can append textual contexts. Only through metadata, that has been added to the intelligence of the code can we know where, when, and how the image was created. The 1s and 0s that construct a digital image do not describe the image or explain who created it. Without this metadata an image is just a numeric representation. In this sense, the metadata attaches context to the image’s production, but as the film presents it, this dominance is limited.

Pack says he can’t expect anyone who hasn’t seen what he has seen to understand how he categorized the photographs. He was told to create a timeline of events and identify the people and effort put into prisoner abuse. Out of the reported 14,972 digital files acquired by the investigation, Pack analyzed two hundred and eighty photographs, most from the digital cameras of three soldiers. After synchronizing the cameras’ internal clocks, Pack was able to group the photographs according to incident and duration. He created a visual timeline of thumbnails and sorted them according to camera, and then cross-referenced the images with the MPs’ logbook from the prison. In the film the timeline of metadata is visually conveyed as a colorful genome map. As the frame moves in closer the tiny thumbnails are enlarged to reveal the Abu Ghraib photographs. Here the genome comparison communicates the use of technology to identify the specific genes responsible for physical and psychological disorders of the “bad apples” responsible for the photographs. The “bad apple” trope was widely used by the administration and media when describing the soldiers implicated in the scandal. In other words, the photographs were not representative of the atmosphere created by American wartime policies, but rather they were representative of a few “bad apples” that needed to be isolated and removed. This visual metaphor is representative of the investigative process of identifying the “bad apples,” as well as the human desire to use scientific technology to control outcomes.

Pack explains that emotion and politics could not play a role in his investigation; he had to remain detached. The metadata supplied by the cameras provides the impression that interpretation can remain objective. A Desert Storm and Guantanamo Bay veteran, Pack explains:
People that haven’t been where I’ve been, I can’t expect them to see the pictures in the same way. All a picture is, is frozen moment of time and of reality. You can interpret them differently, based on your background or your knowledge. But when it comes time where you’re presenting them in court, what the photograph depicts is what it is. (Standard Operating Procedure)
This metadata was important to the prosecution because it appeared to bypass human interpretation. However, as various photographs are rubber stamped with the verdict criminal act or standard operating procedure, viewers are called upon to question the prosecution’s judgment as well as their own. The military prosecution used limited metadata to support their case against the soldiers. Pack’s statement that “what the photograph depicts, is what it is” is merely one reading of the photographs that support a particular claim that select military personnel rather than the U.S. government or military were responsible for the conditions that led to the detainee abuse (Standard Operating Procedure). The metadata supports society’s desire for truth free from indeterminacy, free from cultural readings, free of narrative projections. Society wants information, factual information, and metadata seemingly fulfills this desire. No longer satisfied with the adage “seeing is believing” we now turn to metadata. We want to trust the data, because data is less dubious in interpretation. But this metadata, too, is appended information and cannot provide further insights as to the meaning of an image.

The soldiers caught frozen in precarious positions with detainees bear witness to a story that lay beyond the framing of the camera’s viewfinder. When Specialist Megan Ambuhl discusses a set of images depicting blood stained prison cells, she is concerned that the photographs do not convey the truth. The bloody images, she explains is a visual record that had been taken out of context. In her account, a detainee that had acquired and concealed a 9mm from an Iraqi security force member working with the U.S. Army. On a routine cell check the detainee fired multiple rounds at the MP’s and received multiple non-fatal injuries as they attempted to disarm him. Ambuhl took issue with the photographs as evidence of abuse; she explains, “Your imagination can run wild when you just see blood, and you don’t have the story behind it. The pictures only show you a fraction of a second. You don’t see forward and you don’t see backward. You don’t see outside the frame” (Standard Operating Procedure). Here Ambuhl is articulating a belief that photographs conceal more than they reveal. Ambuhl claims that the MPs were often subjected to violence from detainees, but what the public saw were depictions of violence and a sadistic abuse of power. This particular interview emphasizes that our value judgments are pertinent to our perception of images. Images have no inherent meaning; they are part invention and part interpretation. As a form of telecommunications, the photographic image is detached from the authoritative presence of the producer. Once transmission has taken place, meaning is no longer anchored to an authority of the presence conceived by the producer. As such, Morris asks viewers to take into account that our perception of the world of objects is always vulnerable to how our conscious or subconscious frames what is seen.

To reinforce the concept of mediation, Morris uses beautifully composed slow-motion dramatizations of eyewitness accounts and various mythologies associated with the war to disrupt any initial impressions of the photographs. Morris used the Phantom V9 high-speed camera to achieve the effect of a film-still. The Phantom V9 camera can shoot an extraordinary range of frames per second (from 5fps to 10,750 fps); its speed captures impressions that are too fast for the human eye or typical film camera to register. By widening and slowing the frame, Morris is drawing attention to the details viewers might have missed, making them aware of how vision can be misleading, and asking them to take another look.

Morris’ film does not exonerate the soldiers from the wrong doings; however, he points out that the use of limited computerized metadata without examining context, as incontrovertible proof of guilt is problematic. That somehow by only reporting what the images depict, we can master not only computerized data but also its interpretation. This data doesn’t answer for the fact that the Geneva Convention laws were broken, that a pornographic and sadistic atmosphere was encouraged, that stripping detainees of clothes was a psychological tactic, that the female undergarments were provided by the military, that dog handlers were encouraged to shake up detainees, that the MP’s were not properly trained and were overworked, that undocumented prisoners were detained and interrogated by Other Government Agents (OGA); and that the MP’s were told over and over again that they were doing a “good job.” Standard Operating Procedure provides no clear answers. Ultimately what is conveyed is that even though digital images contain computerized data that make a connection to reality, it still does not come close to answering: what is it we see? Rather, it comes down to perception; a perception that technology cannot answer with certainty. We come to realize that questions concerning the truth beyond the frame, as Morris seeks to uncover, is still unattainable, even mediated through film.

Category: impressions | Tags: , , ,
Joan Shaffer | November 20, 2010
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A Play on A School Play

Recently, a video titled “Scarface School Play” has gone viral on the InterWebz. The video depicts a low budget stage performance of a scene from Brian De Palma’s 1983 film “Scarface.” The character Tony Montana has long been an influential cultural icon--often quoted in casual conversations, music, and satire. Why is “Scarface School Play” worth a mention? It has to do with many levels of signification. In the video, children are acting out one of the most violent film scenes to date, which conflicts with the concept of a school play.

So is the problematic, here, the signified “Scarface” or rather the signifier that frames the scene as a “school play”? I think it is both.

The video is actually professionally produced and published on Youtube to appear as though it were not. We see the acted production from the point of view of a parent. The video mimics the handheld camera work of a parent with abrupt zooming motions and low quality sound. Even though viewers do not see the camera within the scene or really know who is shooting the video, we know that the camera is indeed part of the staged event. This staging of the film production contributes to the “realness” of the event.

The referentiality of a “real” event is also indicated in the title of the video clip: “School Play.” The title “Scarface School Play” signifies what it is not, but is--a play on Scarface and a play of words. The producers of the film, play with the most violent scene from Scarface by having children reenact its scene. And they play with the word play by creating a linguistic and visual relationship to schoolchildren. It is rather brilliant. See for yourself:

Category: impressions |
Joan Shaffer | April 18, 2010
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Mourning, Memory, and Blindness in Robert Frost’s “Home Burial”

6a00d8341ebb5d53ef00e54f4dcd9e8833-640wiHow do we communicate the loss of a friend or family member to others? Is the process of mourning a singular event that can be transcended by the narcissistic ego? These are just some of the questions Jacques Derrida confronts in his work on mourning. By using Derrida’s work on mourning, perhaps we may be offered a better understanding of how mourning operates in the poetry of Robert Frost. In the poem “Home Burial” the process of mourning is appropriated by the first person consciousness and is turned into a singular event. This first person consciousness is blind to the other because of a desire to assert itself as unitary, coherent, and continuous. The subject of mourning, particularly in regards to “Home Burial,” has not been addressed sufficiently in the works of Robert Frost. Some critics, like Philip Gerber, assert that death and mourning in the poetry of Frost is presented as a “loss of equilibrium” in which mankind must come to terms with “their lot” (Gerber 121). This phrase “loss of equilibrium” implies a definitive center, a place in which terms can be settled; however, Frost never seems to assert a definitive center, only a divided, fractured, and dispersed point of departure. Mourning is an example of that fractured point of departure.

Robert Frost’s poem “Home Burial” illustrates the aporia of mourning by carefully crafting a representation of differences between husband and wife. The wife does not want to forget the loss of their child because to forget would be an expression of infidelity towards his memory. The husband, on the other hand, wants to mourn in order to heal his grief. However, the conflict of differences faced by the couple exhibits what Derrida explains as the aporia of mourning. For Derrida, the aporia of mourning is a mark of being caught between two infidelities. It is a moment “where success fails…And inversely, the failure succeeds…” (Memoires 35). In other words, through the process of mourning, one should be able to accept the loss of the other and be relieved of the grief; however, if we can come to terms with the loss then it appears that mourning has failed. Thus a proper or true mourning would be one that outlives our very own existence. In this sense, when mourning succeeds it also fails; and in the same instance it must fail in order to succeed, hence, the impossibility of true mourning.

In the form of a dramatic dialogue, the poem begins by setting up an opposition of differences by placing the wife and husband on different visual planes. This initiates a conflict of seeing. The wife stands at the top of the stairs, while the husband looks on from the bottom. He sees her, but she does not see him.  She is haunted with “some fear” that approaches from behind (2). What is this “fear” that causes her to look “back over her shoulder”? (3). The expression indicates a disturbance that may be approaching. Here the young woman appears to be caught between a choice of retreating or advancing her movements—she is suspended. The husband then breaks the suspended scene by “Advancing toward her”(6). As he approaches, he asks: “What is it you see/ From up there always? [...]”(6-7). Even though the husband is able to physically see his wife, his question reveals the blindness of his first person consciousness. He sees only what he wants to see. He then demands to know what his wife sees. She gives no response; instead, she descends the stairs and stands before him in silence: “She let him look, sure that he wouldn’t see, / Blind creature; an awhile he didn’t see” (15-16). Here the wife wants to be seen. She wants him to recognize her first person consciousness—to have pity for her loss. The husband merely responds, “‘Oh,’ and again, ‘Oh’”(17). Immediately, she demands an explanation for this ambiguous utterance. “‘Just that I see’” he asserts (18). What does the husband “see” that she does not “see” in herself? It appears that at this moment the husband and wife are presented as mimetic doubles, blind to the other.

This mimetic doubling incites a violent conflict in which each first person consciousness is defensive of the other. Derrida explains this conflict as a form of “jealous violence,” in which “the self-otherness or self-difference (the difference from within oneself)…” protects its first person consciousness (Archive 78). This “violence” is what happens when one’s first person consciousness is threatened by the possibility of erasure, of non-existence. Both husband and wife assert a self-consciousness that is singular and absolute. The husband explains that he was unable to see before, but now he can see. He appears to be putting forth the notion that he can see beyond his first person consciousness; however, when the wife lashes out at him, he immediately places himself in a defensive position to guard his first person consciousness. Both, husband and wife, attempt to hold onto their first person consciousness by closing themselves off to the other. The wife believes that he cannot know the grief she is experiencing and the husband feels like he is deadlocked into an impossible situation. The husband feels he cannot bring up the loss of their child without conflict. Bitterly he says, “‘Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?’” while the woman feels that no man can know, or possibly begin to know, what it is like for a mother to lose a child (35). Here we are shown that the wife is also blinded by her first person consciousness, which excludes the possibility of her husband’s grief. At this point it becomes clear that mourning is approached two very different ways, each person believes that their first person consciousness is absolute and their experience is a singular event.

The husband initially appears to be aware that he needs to give up part of himself in order to see beyond his first person consciousness. However, when he says, “I can’t say I see how” his tone conveys a defensive gesture, which is trying to protect his first person point of view (48). This first person point of view, however, when faced with the relational difference between the self and something external to that self begins to “guards against” the others, but it also “keeps” within itself “some of the other” (Archive 78). In other words, this opposition to the other enables the illusion of a continuity of self; however it simultaneously carries and conceals from itself a trace of the other. The husband asserts that he must surrender “being a man” (which is his first person consciousness), in order to see the other (49). This is precisely what his first person consciousness wants to protect because it wants to assert a point of self-reference that is unitary, coherent, and continuous.

The husband’s desire to assert his first person consciousness as continuous is exhibited when he asks if an arrangement can be made in which he could “bind” himself (50). This binding is a promise that projects an intention in the future, that his first person consciousness will be continuous. This passage draws attention to the fact that language conceals acts of self-reference. Words are often used to protect one’s feelings, but they are used blindly, because it is believed that true facts about the world are being asserted. Language conceals acts of self-reference while presenting acts of reference. In other words, we believe we are constatively describing the world, when really we are just protecting and projecting our self-referential selves. The husband wants to “bind” himself to a promise a future action. A promise is a speech act, a performative utterance, whereby a person in the present makes a statement in the future tense. A promise is made in order to bind a desire to the present and future self. In other words, we promise to feel the same, that the first person point of view will stay the same. However, first person consciousness is not continuous; it lies. Therefore, when the husband offers to “bind” himself to a promise of making matters better between them, he is actually expressing awareness that his promised intention is a lie. The promise conceals what the husband already knows to be an impossibility. The present self cannot advance itself as continuous because it is dependent on self-repetition.

For Derrida, the self-referential “I” that is under threat by differentiation institutes itself negatively by a discriminating an ego that is present and apart from any other trace of difference. Nothing exists outside of difference; nothing is independent of its exteriority to other things.  The husband asks his wife to allow him to share her point of view. He says “Let me into your grief” (59). What he is expressing is a desire to experience the grief she feels. He even asks for a “chance” to understand, but he is unable to step outside of his first person consciousness and his desire is presented as an emotional need concealed by language (60). This pleasant gesture is immediately retracted when he tells her that she over extends her grievance period. He says, “What was it brought you up to think it the thing / To take your mother-loss of a first child / So inconsolably—…”(63-64). Here the husband while claiming to be “not so much / Unlike other folks” is actually setting himself apart (59-60).

The husband wants his wife to approach the death of their child in the same manner in which he does. He asserts, “‘You’d think his memory might be satisfied—’”(66). Here the husband is contending that memory should be enough to satisfy the mourning process. For him, mourning is a period of time in which one is able to get over the loss of the other and move on with everyday concerns. However, as Derrida explains, “bereaved memory, can be neither the so-called resurrection of the other himself (the other is dead and nothing can save him from this death, nor can anyone save us from it)…” (Memoires 22). In other words, memory engenders an attachment to the other; however, it also conceals the impossibility of resurrection.  Memory is as such that it tries to appropriate the other and keep itself as the point of self-reference; it is narcissistic. Derrida explains that we believe that in mourning we preserve our memory of the deceased so that “we can then speak of them, and do them justice…” however, this is only possible if the image of the other “remains legible”(Memoires 3). For the husband, the memory of the deceased child is a (re)membering in which the deceased can be interiorized and kept whole. The wife, on the other hand, is aware that the memory of her child is inadequate.

The poem then begins to reveal more clearly the discriminating first person consciousness of the woman. She explains that she saw her husband dig the “little grave” (73). For her, the husband displayed a form of infidelity to the memory of the child in his ability to bury the child without suffering. She tells him that she watched him bury their child in disbelief. This expression of disbelief, however, is merely her first person consciousness defending itself against the other. She says that she saw with her “own eyes” (83). However, does she really see? It appears that she saw what she wanted to see, and that is the image of an unfeeling spouse and father. She recalls that her husband buried their son and then came into the house and discussed “everyday concerns” (86). She declares that she witnessed it with her own eyes, but really it is merely her first person consciousness differentiating the image of her husband from who he really is.

Many critical readings of “Home Burial” suggest that the wife is inconsolable. This reading is not so different from how the husband in the poem reads his wife. Philip Gerber explains that the husband “feels his loss no less painfully than she; but, knowing that life is for the living, he has released the past to itself…”(Gerber 120). In other words, Gerber suggests that the wife cannot see how her inconsolable behavior, her inability to accept the death of a child, is an obstacle she needs to conquer in order to live in a happy life. Similarly, Manorama Trikha, places the wife in the inconsolable category, explaining that the wife undergoes a “psychological crisis” due to the loss of her child (Trikha 142). It is true that the wife experiences a “crisis.” The wife presents her grief as a singular event, forwarding a narcissistic ego that expresses loss as a process of taking pity for oneself. She feels that no one can understand what she is going through; her own husband “couldn’t care!”(97). She confesses that even the comfort she receives from friends fall “far short” of her understanding (96). However, inconsolable the wife may appear, there is a detail that has yet to be explored—the tears that flow from her eyes. After a confessional outburst, the wife begins to cry. In Memoirs of the Blind, Derrida explains that when tears “come to the eyes, if they well up in them, and if they can also veil sight, perhaps they reveal, in the very course of the experience, in this coursing of water…deep down inside, the eye would be destined not to see but to weep” (Memoirs 126). Crying makes human eyes human; it blinds the first person consciousness. To see humanly is to feel, to turn the eyes into an organ of touching. In other words, at the very moment when the eye can no longer see because tears veil it, this is precisely the moment when the eye is most apt to see—it is able to surrender its first person point of view. Thus the wife’s tears are not merely a display of inconsolability; rather it exhibits her ability to transcend her first person consciousness. She is able to see that she was blind to her own blindness.

The husband, however, responds without recognizing that his wife’s tears are a mark of transcending her first person consciousness. He is too caught up in his first person point of view that he cannot see what it means when his wife cries. He asks, “Why keep it up?”(110). He wants to know why she resists the possibility of moving beyond the narcissistic act of mourning. He believes that he understands her point of view, but he does not. He sees what he wants to see and that is a woman who cannot accept her lot in life. The husband is unable to transcend his first person consciousness, and he reacts more aggressively to protect his point of view. As she moves toward the door to exit, she pleads: “How can I make you—” (113). She is unable to finish her statement because she is interrupted. He tells her that if she leaves he will bring her “back by force…”(116). The husband is verbally aggressive because he cannot express within the limits of language that his first person consciousness is merely a point of self-reference that is subject to self-interest.

By opening up a reading of Frostian poetics, using Jacques Derrida’s work on mourning we can perhaps see how Philip Gerber’s argument of a “loss of equilibrium” is inconclusive and limiting. In “Home Burial,” Frost shows that mourning is more than a process of accepting one’s lot in life. Through a dramatic dialogue, we can see that mourning is a complex process that is bound up by impossibilities. Mourning in the works of Frost is not an experience that can be dealt with in the same way or for the same reasons. The couple in “Home Burial” is faced with a conflict of differences, differences that exclude the other. Both husband and wife assert their first person consciousness as absolute and continuous. They are postured as mimetic doubles, desiring to protect a first person point of view, but are blind to their own blindness. Critics, however, have given the husband in “Home Burial” far too much lenience when it comes to how he deals with his wife and mourning. I have tried to show that Frost illustrates how it is possible to escape the limitations of one’s first person consciousness, to finally see what was not seen before through the physical act of crying. Perhaps by further exploring how mourning operates in the work of Frost, criticism can add a new layer of interpretation that has been so succinctly been embedded in language.

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Joan Shaffer | April 15, 2010
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The Rhetoric of Fear

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Talk of the Nation featured a discussion titled “The Things Civilians Don’t Understand About War.” The discussion was in response to the Wikileaks video showing US gunners killing 12 people in Baghdad. The question under discussion: Who, if anyone, should be accountable for what appeared to be criminal behavior? The panel included former Army officer and author Matt Gallagher and Georgetown University professor of law Gary Solis. Both Gallagher and Solis were invited to present their interpretation of the recent Wikileaks video from a military perspective.

While this panel provided useful information on the context of combat and the military Rules of Engagement, what stood out to me was the repeated notion of fear for the future to come. Throughout the panel the future is discussed as if it is known or could be known. Since the 9/11 bombings our government and society has subscribed to this fear. However, preemptive action has become our antidote for fear, as if it will protect us from the possibility that future attacks “may” occur. This fear for what “might” come is troubling to the extent that as a society we were willing to forgo many of the founding principles of our country. Principles such as “freedom” that we (without a sense of irony) pronounce to spread across the globe. Some say this is okay, if it means that we “might” be safer. But, what/who are we safe from? What/who are we protecting ourselves from?
What strikes me as problematic is the ability justify preemptive actions, based on a perceived threat. Solis argues that the US gunners followed protocol and are legally protected under the Rules of Engagement. Solis explains that the”ROE doesn’t explain what constitutes a war crime or what doesn’t. What the law of armed conflict says through case law, not in the Geneva Conventions or the additional protocols, is that if those pilots and those gunners honestly and reasonably believed that those individuals constituted a threat to American forces, they could lawfully target them.” Here the Rules of Engagement rightfully absolves soldiers of murder. Though it also absolves those who provoke engagement. Solis’ phrasing is too vague. How can the protocol determine what is “reasonably believed”? Is it so that we can lawfully justify violence by consulting our inner butterflies?
Gallagher defends the gunners by explaining that we don’t know from the video why the helicopter was following the group of civilians. This is certainly true. The Wikileaks video does not provide context for the situation. In the video, Iraqi civilians had an RPG but it was not threatening the helicopters. Gallagher in defense of the gunners, explains “you know, who’s to say that that guy with the RPG was doing five minutes before. You know, what is the context of why the helicopter had followed those particular people there, and had they posed a threat in the past, clearly they’re going to pose a threat in the future, as well.” Gallagher’s word choice is troublesome to me. Here the past threat is explained as a definite future threat. Notice Gallagher used the adverb “clearly” which presents itself as a statement of fact. Certainly, it is true we don’t know the intentions of the Iraqi civilians, but lives were cut short due to a negative projection of the future.
Gallagher argues that civilians don’t get it; they can’t imagine the feeling of fear during war time. It is true that civilians can’t know the gruesome frontline experience of war. However, it is precisely the imagination that fear feeds upon that makes civilians critical of war in general. Many people have connections to those with frontline experience. Many bear witness to the changes in the returning soldiers. So, it is not enough to say that civilians “don’t get it.” We want to (need to) understand how to heal wounds. We, like the returning soldiers, are trying to make sense of the lives lost throughout our country’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. We may not have battle experience, but we certainly know the fear our country has promoted.
Solis explains “You are constantly in an environment where you don’t know who’s coming, what’s coming, who’s going to be the means of your death or what the manner may be, and you learn to react, and you react in violent ways.” What is  revealed by the panelists is a direct result of the pandemic of fear brought forth by the Bush Doctrine. How can we say with certainty someone is coming? or who is “going to be the means of your death”? These things can’t be predicted; they are not present to us. These thoughts are provoked by a spectral-a memory of the past. In other words, this very moment (our evolvement in Iraq and Afghanistan) is connected to the past-the tragedy of 9/11. Our rich American history is an account of those that came before us. We mourn their contribution to our present, without which we would cease to be. Thus, we are presently haunted by this idea that I am here because they are not. But within this very moment there is a possibility of the future to come. But what is to come is something that can’t/shouldn’t be known or anticipated. We must not program ourselves to fear the future to come because when we do so, we risk all possibility for those that will carry on after us.
This fear has paralyzed our society to the extent that the future to come is never the land of hope and promise, but rather one filled with fear and loathing for what “may come.” What kind of future is that?

While this panel provided useful information on the context of combat and the military Rules of Engagement, what stood out to me was the repeated notion of fear for the future to come. The future is discussed as if it is known or could be known. Since the 9/11 bombings our government and society has subscribed to and responded to this fear using preemptive action. Preemptive action has become our antidote for fear, as if it will protect us from the possibility that future attacks “may” occur. This fear for what “might” come is troubling to the extent that as a society we were willing to forgo many of the founding principles of our country. Principles such as “freedom” that we (without a sense of irony) pronounce to spread across the globe. Some say this is okay, if it means that we “might” be safer. But, what/who are we safe from? What/who are we protecting ourselves from?

What strikes me as problematic is the ability justify preemptive actions, based on perceived threats. Solis argues that the US gunners followed protocol and are legally protected under the Rules of Engagement. Solis explains that the:

ROE doesn’t explain what constitutes a war crime or what doesn’t. What the law of armed conflict says through case law, not in the Geneva Conventions or the additional protocols, is that if those pilots and those gunners honestly and reasonably believed that those individuals constituted a threat to American forces, they could lawfully target them.

The Rules of Engagement absolves soldiers of murder. Though it also absolves those who provoke engagement. I’m not making the case that we shouldn’t lawfully protect our soldiers against charges of murder. In fact, I think that it may provide them with a sense of solace on the dark nights of their return from war. Rather Solis’ phrasing “if those pilots and those gunners honestly and reasonably believed” is troubling. How can the protocol determine what is “reasonably believed”?  Is it so that we can lawfully justify violence by consulting our inner butterflies? This to me sounds too holistic like The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Gallagher defends the gunners by explaining that we don’t know why the helicopter was following the group of civilians.  True. The Wikileaks video does not provide context for the situation. In the video, Iraqi civilians are seen with an RPG. What does that say about their intentions? Gallagher in defense of the gunners, explains:

you know, who’s to say that that guy with the RPG was doing five minutes before. You know, what is the context of why the helicopter had followed those particular people there, and had they posed a threat in the past, clearly they’re going to pose a threat in the future, as well.

Gallagher’s word choice is typical of the way we discuss threats. The past threat is explained as a definite future threat. Notice Gallagher used the adverb “clearly” which presents itself as a statement of fact. Of course we can’t predict the intentions of the Iraqi civilians, but lives their lives were cut short due to a negative projection of the future.

Gallagher argues that civilians “don’t get it”; they can’t imagine the feeling of fear during war time. It is true that civilians can’t know the gruesome frontline experience of war. However, it is precisely the imagination that fear feeds upon that makes civilians critical of war in general. Many people have connections to those with frontline experience. Many bear witness to the changes in the returning soldiers. So, it is not enough to say that civilians “don’t get it.” We want to (need to) understand how to heal wounds. We, like the returning soldiers, are trying to make sense of the lives lost throughout our country’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. We may not have battle experience, but we certainly know the fear our country has promoted.

Solis explains:

You are constantly in an environment where you don’t know who’s coming, what’s coming, who’s going to be the means of your death or what the manner may be, and you learn to react, and you react in violent ways.

What is  revealed by the panelists is a direct result of the pandemic of fear brought forth by the Bush Doctrine. How can we say with certainty someone is coming? or who is “going to be the means of your death”? These things can’t be predicted; they are not present to us. These violent thoughts and actions are provoked by spectrality–a memory of the past. In other words, this very moment (our evolvement in Iraq and Afghanistan) is connected to the past–the tragedy of 9/11. We don’t want such a tragedy to happen again. However, our rich American history is an account of those that came before us. We mourn their contribution to our present, without which we would cease to be. Thus, we are presently haunted by this idea that I am here because they are not. But within this very moment there is a possibility of the future to come. But what is to come is something that can’t/shouldn’t be known or anticipated. In other words,we must not program ourselves to fear the future to come because when we do so, we risk all possibility for those that will carry on after us.

The rhetoric of fear has paralyzed our society to the extent that the future to come is never the land of hope and promise, but rather one filled with fear and loathing for what “may come.” What kind of future is that?

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