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12. See, for example, Mauss (1997) and Derrida (1992).
13. Although I do not dispute the gravity of the charges leveled against bin Laden, it is
the technologies deployed in his representation in which I am interested, not his relative
guilt or innocence.
14. Bataille’s (1985) fascinating narratives of these two organs—solar anus and pineal
eye—deftly collapse Enlightenment borders dividing sight from smell. In the process, the
human face takes on a modified anality.
15. I see fascism as fundamentally rooted in the body. Taking my cue from writers like
Klaus Theweleit (1987), who describes fascism in Male Fantasies as a conscious desire to
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rid the body (both individual and collective bodies) of perceived impurities, and Rey Chow
(1988), who adds to this desire for purgation an inextricable wish for beauty and perfection,
I believe fascism can be found where the quest for an ideal and the deliberate pathologization
of difference are detectable. Michel Foucault’s introduction to Anti-Oedipus remains one
of the most compelling articulations of this kind of fascism:
Last but not least, the major enemy . . . is fascism. . . . And not only historical fas-
cism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini—which was able to mobilize and use the
desire of the masses so effectively—but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and
in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very
thing that dominates and exploits us. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1996, p. xiii)
16. See Sedgwick (1985).
17. Robyn Wiegman (1995) provides an important analysis of lynching practice in
American Anatomies:
In the turn toward lynching . . . in the post-Emancipation years, we might recognize
the symbolic force of the white mob’s activity as a denial of the black male’s newly
articulated right to citizenship and, with it, the various privileges of patriarchal
power that have historically accompanied such significations within the public
sphere. . . . In the lynch scenario, the stereotypical fascination and abhorrence for
blackness is literalized as a competition for masculinity and seminal power. (p. 83)
18. The attendant ironies of this post-emancipation frenzy—that the prevalence of misce-
genation between White slave owners and Black slave women prior to emancipation are a well
documented fact—bear repeating. See, for example, Wiegman (1995) and Carby (1997).
19. Discussing the work of Ida B. Wells, Carby (1997) notes:
Wells demonstrated that, while accusations of rape were made in only one-third of all
lynchings, the cry of rape was an extremely effective way to create panic and fear. . . .
The North conceded to the South’s argument that rape was the cause of lynching;
the concession to lynching for a specific crime in turn conceded the right to lynch
any black male for any crime. (p. 335)
20. There are, of course, an abundance of images of diverse women that have come to
signify in this War on Terror, but it is beyond the scope of this article to explore all of them.
Further work needs to be done, for example, on the representations of Afghan women,
members of Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, the role of the burqa
and women suicide bombers. In this article, I am concerned only with the production of
White womanhood and its historical linkages to discourses of femininity, miscegenation,
and danger within America.
21. See, for example, Brittain (2006, pp. 8-12).
22. Writing about the Shoshana Johnson event, Kumar (2004) notes,
While the stories are similar, Johnson could not be Lynch. As a black woman with
dreadlocks, she simply does not qualify for the status of “girl next door.” . . . The
deployment of whiteness in the Lynch hero/victim narrative is essential to differen-
tiating “America” and the “West” from “Islam” and the “Middle East.” (p. 302)
23. As Christopher Hanson (2003) writes,
Neither a link between Saddam and Osama bin Laden nor Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction materialized. Although the Pentagon drummed the idea that our mission
was to liberate the Iraqi people, many Iraqis saw our troops as unwelcome. But
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Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies • November 2007
before doubts could fester, the Lynch rescue story broke. It was a p.r. windfall for
the military, the first successful rescue of a U.S. POW behind enemy lines since
World War II. The announcement was a godsend to the press corps. . . . Reporters
at last could deliver the straightforward, emotionally fulfilling saga of good beating
evil that America expects. (p. 59)
24. See, for example, Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1940) and Triumph of the Will
(1934), both celebrations of idealized bodies devoted to the State.
25. I mean, of course, not simply the Shoshana Johnsons and Lori Piestewas who are
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