On thinking and not being able to think: reflections on viewing the Abu Ghraib photos.
Using experiences from childhood, from encounters with contemporary art, from clinical experience, and, most elaborately, from an initial viewing of the Abu Ghraib photos, the author argues that the interpretability of experience depends upon its being legible. This legibility, in turn, depends upon the interpreter maintaining contact with his/her own capacities for thought, and, more fundamentally, with the vitally necessary community of others with whom he/she shares those capacities.
Moss
Donald B
DB
New York University Psychoanalytic Institute, USA. donaldmoss@mindspring.com
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007493:Iraq; D008297:Male; D010781:Photography; D011330:Prisons; D013850:Thinking; D014104:Torture / Q000523:psychology*; D014481:United States; D014857:Warfare