Rhetorically Representing Public Policy

Abstract

This essay offers a critical reading of National Geographic's 2002 documentary The Search for the Afghan Girl as a means to suggest how, and in what ways, communication scholars can retheorize the relationship between media representations and policy. Reading critically National Geographic's strategic redeployment of the Afghan Girl, I argue that the text functions rhetorically to refigure the public understanding of, and attitudes towards, current biometric and identification-based policy. Put differently, I suggest that the 2002 representation of the Afghan Girl helped to render acceptable and intelligible what the American public had once vehemently opposed: biometric national identification technologies. In turn, the media spectacle of the 2002 Afghan Girl helped to rhetorically constitute a new kind of post-9/11 US citizen subject. Understanding the ways in which feminist postcolonial theory can lend credence to issues of cultural and public policy can help bridge the gap between the theoretical production of communication scholarship and the material realities of government action.

Keywords:

• Afghan girl
• biometrics
• National Geographic
• policy
• representation
• rhetoric

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as Dr. David Hingstman, Dr. Barbara Biesecker, and Dr. Anna Eblen for their careful reading and instructive comments.

Notes

 1. Preliminary work on this essay was presented at NCA 2005 and was derived from a completed dissertation project (directed by Dr. David Hingstman) at The University of Iowa.

 2. Each of the following communication scholars astutely point to similar stories of “Third World women” as national appropriations of liberal feminist argumentation and justifications for war: Ayotte and Husian (2005); Cloud (2004); Rowe and Malhontra (2003); Stabile and Kumar (2005). My intention is to affirm their readings of these narratives as well as push beyond them. It is worth noting that these claims are by no means altogether new (see Mohanty 1988; Spivak 1988, 1989, 1990, 1999).

 3. While “the other” simply denotes anyone other than one's self, in some instances, when referring to “the Other” I capitalize the “O” in order to delineate the capitalized “Other” from the little “o” other (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin 1995, pp. 169–171). Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin do an especially fine job articulating the importance of this distinction for postcolonial scholars. The distinction, they suggest, is rooted in Freud, but most notable in the work of Jacques Lacan. “In Lacan's theory, the other—with the small ‘o’—designates the other who resembles the self… In post-colonial theory, it can refer to the colonized others who are marginalized by imperial discourse… The Other—with the capital ‘O’—has been called the grande-autre by Lacan, the great Other, in whose gaze the subject gains identity” (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin 1995, pp. 169–170). This distinction however, should not be read to suggest that the two terms are not related. Rather, “the construction of the dominant imperial Other occurs in the same process by which the colonial others come into being” (p. 171).

 4. Rajan explains in a note that her understanding of this distinction is based on the work of Muddupalani Writing Women in India .

 5. By suggesting texts like the Afghan Girl are produced, I do not mean to signify that the production process is linear or intentional. I understand production to function as a type of reappropriation or citation. Here production denotes a thing that results from any action, process, or effort, with the understanding that the result or effect of that action need not be an intentional process.

 6. Here I am thinking about classic colonial texts like Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. National Geographic's protagonist, Steve McCurry, is much like Joseph Conrad's Kurtz. The striking similarity between these two colonial quests is worth mentioning. Both protagonists venture into darkness (read: The African Congo and Afghanistan respectfully) to acquire knowledge and return to the West. Conrad's novel is revered as a canonical colonialist text, and is the subject of much postcolonial and literary critique and debate. (This status is in large part due to the high volume of postcolonial literary critiques of Conrad's novel. Three well-known critiques are advanced by Said (1993) in Culture and Imperialism, Jameson (1981) in The Political Unconscious and Achebe (1977) in An Image of Africa). The symbolism between Conrad's novel and McCurry's story is meant to demonstrate the ways in which both narratives contain features of colonial text. Both tales tell of the heroic efforts of an explorer who is brave enough to go beyond the civilized Western world and venture into the dark, and most certainly dangerous, unknown. Conrad's Africa, like McCurry's Afghanistan, is represented as a premodern, timeless place whose people are in need of civilizing. The binaries of light/dark, active/passive, and self/other construct both narratives. Both protagonists are tempted by the sensual lure of certain exotic women—the African Woman and Afghan Girl respectively. The female roles are similar. Both bear an anonymous identity, one that is literally named for the country they stand in for. Like the virgin land upon which they live, both the African Woman and the Afghan Girl invite possession, discovery, and protection.

 7. “The term ‘disaster pornography’ has been used to describe images of disaster and suffering in which people are exploited, dehumanized and presented as objects of consumption” (Duncan 2004).

 8. Perera notes at the end of her essay that her text is excerpted from a longer essay, “The Gender of Borderpanic” in Women, Crime and Globalisation (2005).

 9. The Afghan Girls fund was created by the National Geographic Society in concert with the search to find Sharbat Gula. Under the guidance of The Asia Foundation, the fund raises money for the education of Afghani girls. While there are certainly constructive components to this goal, the motivation is worthy of critical interrogation. Like the Afghan Girl, the fund was designed under the assumption that the Afghani government, even in its post-Taliban years, is ill-suited to educate girls properly. Moreover, the educational materials provided are National Geographic maps and texts and thus can only be assumed to further the neo-imperialist agenda of the society. What's more is that the Asia Foundation happens to have a board of directors made up of former US military generals and government officials. One notable trustee is Terrence B. Adamson, former Attorney General and the current Executive Vice President of the National Geographic Society. Additional information about the Afghan Girls fund can be sought at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/donate/afghan_girls_fund.html.

10. For a complete list of policies using biometrics, see the Department of Defense's biometric home page, http://www.biometrics.dod.mil/default.aspx. Those who are especially eager might consider subscribing to the government published Biometric Bulletin, http://www.biometrics.dod.mil/newsletter/issues/2006/January/Vol2Issue1.htm.

11. Specifically the list includes men arriving from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, and Kuwait. More details on the program can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Registration.