4 - Dead Terrorists and Dead Dictators

Summary

Chapter 4 examines how obscenity is used as a regulatory mechanism by focusing on dead enemy bodies, using the cases of Muammar Qaddafi and Osama bin Laden. Images of violently dead bodies have been circulated and mobilized in the service of the war-on-terror. This framing shapes the understanding of what war is, via which images of war are deemed legitimate grounds for visual consumption. In considering the technologies of erasure in the war-on-terror, images of Qaddafi reinforced the notion of the inevitable failure of dictatorship. The dead body image of Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, was not publicly released despite widespread demand to see it, but its visibility was characterized as a security risk. The chapter elucidates the visual grammar of images that are overtly related to foreign policy actions such as counter-terrorism or democracy promotion. These larger policy discourses are supported and reinforced by the production and circulation of images of dead enemies in particular ways. By the rupture of the dead body taboo, viewers are instructed to engage with images in specific ways, and thus to engage the policy subjects of those images in particular ways, sustaining a larger narrative of security.