Abstract
This chapter brings a material rhetorics approach to artwork by Moath al-Alwi. The chapter does a deep reading of the signification of the Joint Task Forces “Approved by US forces” stamp that marks the art produced in Guantánamo as property of the US government. It argues that the found nature of the objects that Moath reappropriates for aesthetic expression in his art, specifically in his model ships, retains traces of his everyday experience, making his art political. Ultimately, this chapter argues that Moath’s art, produced out of the material conditions of detention, is at once an archive of that state violence as well as testimony to and resistance to that violence.
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Notes
- 1.
I’m using rhetorics here to signify the art of persuasion, but I also use it to signify the political stakes of Moath’s ships within the context of their production and reception. Rhetoric, as a field of study, is interested not only in persuasion, but also the stakes and ethics of that persuasion.
- 2.
Indefinite detention is a euphemism that refers to the incarceration or detention of individuals, or what the US government calls “unlawful combatants,” without a fair trial or sometimes without even a charge. Indefinite detention violates multiple human rights instruments. Indefinite war refers to the legal gray area that the US government exploits in its “War on Terror,” such that it is not at war with a specific country, but rather against a non-state actor or ideology. Given these terms, a “War on Terror” can be waged indefinitely. (See, e.g., Luban Torture, Power, Law.)
- 3.
For example, there is one camp “where ‘compliant’ detainees live in a communal setting; one where noncompliant detainees are isolated to single cells; and the top-secret Camp 7 that house[d] 15 high-value detainees who were formerly held in CIA custody” (Leopold). When Moath made his ships, he identifies that he was mostly housed in Camp 5 or 6, either in communal settings or in a windowless solitary cell.
- 4.
In fact, in a report commissioned by Diane Feinstein in 2008 and released in 2012 on the feasibility of closing Guantánamo, multiple detention facilities were identified within the US and they were all operated by the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, not by the US Federal Bureau of Prisons (Leopold). This is in order to maintain the detainees’ status of “unprivileged enemy belligerents” (Leopold).
- 5.
In a letter to military officials, lawyers argued for the rights of prisoners to have the ban overturned using federal prison as an example, “pointing out that convicted US state and federal prisoners were permitted to make, send out, exhibit, and sell their art” (Gunter). To date, the military has not responded to the letter.
- 6.
This is especially true when set alongside the kinds of labor that many formally charged and incarcerated individuals are required to do in factory settings for little to no wages.
- 7.
Although there are many groups protesting the existence of the prison, there are pockets of the US public who believe detainees either deserve the treatment they received, or that they have been treated too well. In this sense they do not see their treatment as violent even if it was considered a violation of human rights law.
- 8.
For their part in the Abu Ghraib abuse depicted in the photos that made headlines in 2004, 11 officers were convicted of prisoner abuse (McKelvey). A lawsuit, brought by four former prisoners, remains open against the private contractor, CACI Premier Technology, who “provided interrogation services at the prison” (Bierman).
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Walzer, B. (2024). Guantánamo Bay Ensigns: Material Rhetorics and Moath al-Alwi’s Ships. In: Moore, A.S., Swanson, E. (eds) The Guantánamo Artwork and Testimony of Moath Al-Alwi . Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37656-6_7
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