Photographs and Memory

McAlister organizes the conclusion of her book around “an analysis of the contested meanings and compressed history made visible in five well-known images…from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib” (268). She cleverly employs the photograph to, in one way of putting it, capture a snapshot of the political and social context of that moment. She goes on to describe the epistemological concerns for using the photograph as a historical document. McAlister challenges the myth of photography’s objectivity using Susan Sontag’s thesis that under different circumstances what photographs reveal is vulnerable to relativism. In order to avoid this problem, she fixes the meaning of the image to time or to “at least insist on its historicity” (269). Even in this context, it is difficult to advance a single, linear argument; instead, what emerges is a set of interpretive principles in flux. Culture is messy.
From here, I wanted to depart a bit from her discussion to talk about the consequences of some of these images in memory. McAlister is trying to prevent what she describes a national narrative where “the long history of U.S.-Middle East cultural encounters has frequently been occluded” (303). What happened to these images after they fell out of public attention? Some took on different meaning, some were forgotten, and others fell into the mores of American society. The Abu-Ghriab photographs shattered the public’s image of the “benevolent supremacy” of the United States—inquiries and investigation further sedimented the distrust of our national government and the war. The public’s response to the images was strong enough for court-martials and administrative punishment; however, how vividly have the images of Abu-Ghriab remained in public memory? News reports are more narrative than they are analytic, and we are taught to react, but not to reflect or deliberate. I certainly remember them, and I’m sure people would still recognize it. Still, how much would we, as Americans, think about these images beyond a shallow recognition of temporal significance of the images considering how McAlister has described our encounters with the Middle-East, and the “characteristic amnesias” which form our narratives (303)?