Adler on the Pleasures of Punishment: Complicity, Spectatorship, and Abu Ghraib

Amy Adler, New York University School of Law, has published The Pleasures of Punishment: Complicity, Spectatorship, and Abu Ghraib, in Photography in Punishment in Popular Culture 236 (Austin Sarat and Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., eds., 2015). Here is the abstract.

At the same time that the Supreme Court has come to insist on a radical distinction between representations of sex and violence as a matter of constitutional law, never have the two genres been more deeply intertwined, in popular entertainment, of course, but also in certain practices of punishment. This paper considers the phenomenon of “torture porn” to explore not only representations of torture and humiliation in popular culture, but also the ways in which popular culture has shaped practices of punishment. Here I explore photographs of Abu Ghraib (as well as other legal and cultural disputes over the disclosure of photographs of torture) to explore the ways in which the popular vernaculars of pornography and smart phone photography informed the practice of torture. I compare the photos to a burgeoning genre of reality TV shows from the same era in which in which the spectacle of humiliation, punishment and even torture plays a pivotal and seemingly pleasurable role in the drama. In both scenarios, I focus not only on the mixture of sexuality and violence, pleasure and punishment, but also on the critical role of the camera. Ultimately by analyzing the similarities between “torture porn” in popular entertainment and the visual materials produced at Abu Ghraib, I suggest a mutually productive relationship between popular culture and punishment.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link. 

Joe Biden To Make Appearance On Law & Order: SVU Episode

Current Vice President Joe Biden is the latest in a series of political figures (including the late Senator Fred Thompson, who actually became a regular on three of the Law & Order franchises), who will make a tv appearance. The White House has announced that the Veep (not to be confused with Veep's Selina Meyer) is in Gotham (not to be confused with Gotham) to film a cameo that will be part of an upcoming Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode (not to be confused with Law & Order, Law & Order:  UK, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Trial By Jury, or Law & Order: LA. 

Although my tone in this post is a little flippant, the theme of the episode Mr. Biden will guest on is not. The episode will feature the backlog of untested rape kits that currently plagues a number of jurisdictions and thus endangers sexual assault prosecutions. Mr. Biden will play himself in a press conference in the episode, recognizing Olivia Benson's work in the area. More here from the Wrap, here from the CBC.

A New Book from Routledge Publishing: Law, Memory, Violence: Uncovering the Counter-Archive (Edited by Stewart Motha and Honni van Rijswijk)

Now available: Law, Memory, Violence: Uncovering the Counter-Archive (Stewart Motha and Honni van Rijswijk, eds.; Routledge, 2016). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

The demand for recognition, responsibility, and reparations is regularly invoked in the wake of colonialism, genocide, and mass violence: there can be no victims without recognition, no perpetrators without responsibility, and no justice without reparations. Or so it seems from law’s limited repertoire for assembling the archive after ‘the disaster’. Archival and memorial practices are central to contexts where transitional justice, addressing historical wrongs, or reparations are at stake. The archive serves as a repository or ‘storehouse’ of what needs to be gathered and recognised so that it can be left behind in order to inaugurate the future. The archive manifests law’s authority and its troubled conscience. It is an indispensable part of the liberal legal response to biopolitical violence. This collection challenges established approaches to transitional justice by opening up new dialogues about the problem of assembling law’s archive. The volume presents research drawn from multiple jurisdictions that address the following questions. What resists being archived? What spaces and practices of memory - conscious and unconscious - undo legal and sovereign alibis and confessions? And what narrative forms expose the limits of responsibility, recognition, and reparations? By treating the law as an ‘archive’, this book traces the failure of universalised categories such as 'perpetrator', 'victim', 'responsibility', and 'innocence,' posited by the liberal legal state. It thereby uncovers law’s counter-archive as a challenge to established forms of representing and responding to violence.

Angela Davis and Assata Shakur as Outlaws

Mechthild Nagel, State University of New York (SUNY), Cortland, is publishing Angela Y Davis and Assata Shakur as Women Outlaws: Resisting U.S. State Violence, in volume 13 of Wagadu: A Transnational Journal of Women's and Gender Studies (Summer 2015). Here is the abstract.

Angela Y Davis and Assata Olugbala Shakur have many overlapping histories of struggle in the face of state repression. Both revolutionary freedom fighters were captured after spending time underground as a result of intense surveillance and being marked for outlaw status. They continue to speak out against racist and sexist injustices and global capitalism.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Impact of JFK's Death On Our Culture

The Guardian examines depictions of JFK's assassination in popular culture.

Rape, Law, and Art

Yxta Maya Murray, Loyola Law School Los Angeles, has published Rape Trauma, the State, and the Art of Tracey Emin in volume 100 of the California Law Review (2012). Here is the abstract.

Prosecutors use “rape trauma syndrome” evidence at rape trials to explain victims’ “counterintuitive” behaviors and demeanors, such as their late reporting, rape denials, returning to the scenes of their attacks, and lack of emotional affect. Courts and experts, in instructions and testimony, usually describe victim reticence as a product of “shame” or “trauma.” Feminist critics of R.T.S. evidence posit that the syndrome’s profile is based on incomplete evidence, because most rapes are unreported. Furthermore, they object to its condescending, sexist, and colonial construction of rape victims and their emotions.

In this Article, I respond to feminist critics by studying the work of Tracey Emin. Emin is a British-Turkish artist who suffered an unreported rape at the age of 13, and who has been commenting on that rape through her art ever since. Expanding and innovating upon the work of law and humanities scholars, I apply the insights found in art – or, what I describe as “artifacts,” with a deliberate play on the word – to rape law. Through my study of the facts limned in art, I show how the complexities of Emin’s reactions to rape challenge the too-streamlined and often confusing stories of victims told by prosecutors, experts, and courts. Emin’s art demonstrates that she harbors suspicions of the state, a skepticism based in part on her failure to correspond to “real rape” victim stereotypes. Her critique adds much needed insight into problems of the R.T.S. model. Based on the lessons learned, I make suggestions for rape law reform, and for changes to be made to the administration of rape prosecutions in the U.S. and U.K.

Download the Article from SSRN at the link.