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LIBERATION ! |
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A
Moscow Museum of Modern Art
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The photos from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq seemed like the perfect conflation of two components of Julia Kristeva's 'Abject': horror and the female. Every theater of war requires specific armory, and here America had produced a narrowly targeted new weapon, incorporating a kind of 'vagina dentate,' designed to inflict maximum psychological damage in traditional societies. A soldier genitally equipped to shock and terrify. Decades of Western gender politics have eroded the dividing line between gender roles; through the de-marginalization of the Other, the male Self has lost in clear definition and socially determined purpose. So too, the Islamic world has changed during the past decades: conservative interpretations of Islam have gained influence, and in many regions the traditional segregation of the sexes is increasingly (re-) enforced.
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