ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes rationality and chaos as descriptors to demonstrates that both have become narratives that work to obscure and repress additional gendered explanations of what occurred in Saddam Hussein's former torture chambers, later owned and operated by the American military. It provides a discussion of the chaos associated with Abu Ghraib prison and how this chaos does not fit into modernist narratives of rationality and order, where order and rationality can be equated with the masculine symbolic code. The chapter discusses the nicknames given to detainees as a means to display raw "masculine" power on the part of the American male guards, as well as the use of photography itself to evidence this exposed power over prisoners. Punishment coupled with power and gender can be applied to American soldiers' experiences of Abu Ghraib, where both male and female soldiers reluctantly disclosed that they were suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from the abuse they suffered and witnessed.
