After that overview of dissident Republicanism, we're on to Fran on 'Cruel and Unusual: Abjection and Trauma in Taxi to the Dark Side', a documentary about torture in US concentration camps in Baghram, Guantanamo and Iraq.
We're talking about trauma (the compulsion to repeat and narrativize trauma for cathartic purposes) and abjection (Kristeva's post-Freudian concept of mental and physical breakdown in response to the loss of meaning when faced by conceptual boundaries being crossed) as it's mediated by TV. I love this stuff, though I'm no expert. Intangible, woolly or unclear concepts lead to abjection. I think her point is that 9/11 wasn't easily comprehensible, and led to an abject reaction - the physical, moral and mental horror of Guantanamo.
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