Mediatized conflicts, performative photographs and contested memory: The Abu Ghraib scandal and the iconic struggle over the meanings of the 'war on terror'

This essay offers an explanation of the development and the long-term cultural impact of the Abu Ghraib scandal, by analyzing firstly the conflictual ways in which the pictures taken by a few American soldiers in formerly Saddam Hussein’s torture prison were framed in the US and, secondly, a wide range of practices of productive consumption through which, over the years, they have been transnationally re-articulated in a variety of political, artistic and commercial contexts. From a theoretical viewpoint, this essay integrates research in media studies on the relationships between photojournalism, mediatized conflicts and collective memory with conceptual tools recently developed within the interdisciplinary field of visual culture studies as well as by Jeffrey Alexander’s ‘strong program’ in cultural sociology. By adopting a cultural-sociological approach to the study of both production and consumption of the visual narratives of the Iraqi conflict and by investigating specifically the performative process through which particular photographs came to acquire an iconic status, this essay aims to unveil the culturally coded structures that shape the cognitive, emotional and moral ways in which people in different parts of the world re-acted to the Abu Ghraib scandal and attributed new meanings to the global ‘war on terror’.