Not without my sister (s)

Not without m y sister: imagining a m oral Am erica in “Kandahar” Not without m y sister: im agining a m oral Am erica in “Kandahar” Cyn th ia W e be r 0 9 Novem ber 20 0 5 Shortly after 11 Septem ber 20 0 1, George Bush urged US citizens to w atch Mohsen Makhm albaf’s film , Kandahar, set in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. W hy ? Cy nthia W eber investigates the president’s and the film m aker’s visions of Afghanistan and Afghan w om en. Less than two m onths after 11 September 20 0 1, and a few weeks after the beginning of the US bom bing cam paign in Afghanistan, President George W Bush m ade an urgent plea to see Iranian filmm aker Mohsen Makhm albaf’s Kandahar. He encouraged US citizens to watch it as well. Kandahar tells the story of Afghan refugee Nafas’ journey from Canada back through Afghanistan to find her m aim ed sister before her sister com m its suicide at the last solar eclipse of the m illennium . Originally entitled The Sun Behind the Moon, Kandahar is about unfinished journeys – Afghanistan’s incom plete journey out of the legacies of war (landm ines, fam ine, fundam entalism ) and Nafas’ incom plete journey to rescue her sister. As a disturbing display of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, it m ay seem obvious that Kandahar supports the position of the Bush administration. But reconsidered through what I call a US m oral gram m ar of war – m ade up of the tripartite axis of foreign policy, popular (often film ic) im aginaries, and narratives of the fam ily – Kandahar’s story of separated sisters in need of reunion and apparent rescue also comports well with the stereotypical way the fem inine functions in US national narratives at times of war, as a figure in need of physical and m oral security. This them e, in fact, inform ed official second-wave justifications of the war www.openDem ocracy.net on terror in both the US and the UK. Let us take a closer look. Makhm albaf’s Kandahar The screen is black, except for a circle of jagged light surrounding a large, dark object. This interplay of light and its obstruction is a total solar eclipse. It is the sun behind the moon. Various views of the eclipse appear and disappear as film credits roll and a m ournful soundtrack begins. Cut to a burqa-clad wom an. She lifts her garm ent to reveal her face. Holding her veil overhead, the burqa's mesh casts a grill-like shadow over her eyes. The cam era intently holds its focus on this im age as dialogue ensues. A voice asks in an Afghan language, 'What's your nam e?' The wom an answers, 'Nafas'. The voice asks, 'Who are you?' Nafas answers, 'I'm the bride's cousin'. Nafas' English voiceover joins the m ournful m usic as the cam era lingers on her shadowed face. 'I'd always escaped from jails that imprisoned Afghan wom en. But now I'm a captive in every one of those prisons. Only for you, m y sister'. This is the film ’s opening sequence. Set in Afghanistan just before the end of the last m illennium , Kandahar is a com pilation of stories perform ed by Afghan residents and refugees about a country devastated by decades of 1 Not without m y sister: imagining a m oral Am erica in “Kandahar” war, poverty, and fam ine. What ties these stories together is the journey of Nafas, played by Nelofer Pazira, herself an Afghan refugee who escaped to Canada some ten years earlier. Kandahar tells of Nafas’ return to Afghanistan to find the sister her fam ily left behind when she lost both legs to a landmine on their journey out of the country. Alone in the Taliban-held city of Kandahar since the death of the father who stayed behind to care for her, the sister writes to Nafas of her plans to com mit suicide at the next solar eclipse. Nafas rushes to the Iranian/ Afghan border, determ ined to infuse her sister with hope, with life, with herself as the breath of life (Nafas literally m eaning 'to breathe'). by slipping m akeup and m irror beneath the burqa. As m uch as Nafas enjoys these activities and what they seem to mean, she is anxious to continue her journey. But once back on the road, the fam ily is robbed. All their m oney and possessions, including the truck, are carried off by bandits. The fam ily decide they are at too m uch risk in Afghanistan and return to Iran, leaving Nafas stranded in a sm all village. Here Nafas encounters Khak, a young boy recently expelled from a m adaris – an Islamic school – for his failure to mem orise the Qu’ran. Khak is trying to earn m oney by offering to say prayers for wom en mourning in a cem etery. For $ 50 , Nafas persuades Khak to be her guide, on foot across the white sand dunes toward Kandahar. When Nafas falls ill, Khak takes her to a Arriving just three days before the eclipse, Nafas village doctor who exam ines her piece by piece – spends one day organising her passage into m outh, ear, eye – through a sm all Afghanistan (where women cannot hole in a curtain hung between them t r a vel a lon e) a n d t wo d a ys wh ile Kh a k n e go t ia t e s t h e ir travelling. The film is an unflinching The film is an unflinching conversation, as direct conversation record of Nafas' haun ted an d haunting journey to Kandahar and record of Nafas’ haunted and between unrelated m en and wom en o f t h e Af g h a n i s a n d t h e haunting journey to Kandahar is forbidden. When the doctor and of the Afghanis and m um bles in English, Nafas replies to Afghanistans she encounters along the way. Afghanistans she encounters on him directly in English, confusing Khak. For reasons of safety, the the w ay . We first see Nafas in m otion in a doctor advises Nafas to release Khak Red Cross helicopter taking her to a as her guide, which she does. refugee cam p at the Iranian/ Afghan The doctor turns out to be an African Am erican who border. Speaking into her tape recorder – which she long ago came to Afghanistan in search of God, first by explains to the pilot is her blackbox, 'in case I crash fighting the Soviets, then by fighting various tribal and don't return' – she tells her sister and the viewers factions, and finally by offering his unschooled m edical that this m om ent of m ovem ent was proceeded by assistance to any needy Afghan. The doctor becom es nearly a m onth of waiting in Pakistan. The helicopter Nafas' third guide, driving her in his horse-drawn cart passes over Afghan m ountains until it reaches a clinic to a Red Cross clinic for am putees where he hopes to for landm ine victim s. In a surreal long shot, we watch find someone to take her to Kandahar. Here, the scene as a pair of legs parachutes toward the ground. The of legs parachuting from the sky is repeated. But this following sequence shows young girls at the refugee tim e we see not only the action in the sky but the cam p being prepared for the restricted m obility they action on the ground as, in dram atic slow m otion, will face upon their return to Afghanistan. Do not pick bare-footed one-legged m en race on crutches up dolls, the girls are told, for dolls are wired with desperate to secure the lim bs they are m issing, albeit bombs. The girls practice walking amongst clean, new dolls, building up their im m unities to tem ptation. We in another form . later learn that it was when Nafas' sister picked up Balancing the poignancy of this sequence is our such a doll that she lost her legs, beginning her long introduction to Nafas' fourth and final guide – a onepause in Afghanistan that now threatens to become a handed shyster who regularly returns to the clinic full stop. telling tall tales in an attem pt to secure legs he can sell. Nafas' m oney and the doctor's chiding convince him to At the refugee cam p, Nafas dons a burqa and arranges take Nafas to Kandahar. He goes away to m ake to accom pany an Afghan fam ily on their way to arrangem ents for their journey and returns in a bright Kandahar by posing as the fourth wife. With only a UN orange burqa, explaining that he and Nafas can travel flag as protection, the fam ily board a three-wheel to Kandahar as m em bers of an all-fem ale wedding truck, draped with a colourful em broidered canopy. party. And so they join a procession of brightlyHusband and driver are in the cab; wives and children coloured burqaed women walking through the white in the back. When the party stops for lunch, the wives sand behind the white-burqaed bride-to-be poised and girls defiantly paint their fingernails, put on upon a donkey. All goes well until they reach the brightly-coloured bracelets, and (later) apply lipstick www.openDem ocracy.net 2 Not without m y sister: imagining a m oral Am erica in “Kandahar” outskirts of Kandahar. There the group is stopped at a Taliban checkpoint. Each m ember of the group is searched by two wom en wearing black burqas. One wom an with a book and another with a m usical instrument are detained, as is Nafas' guide, his m ustachioed face revealed when he is required to lift his garm ent. Like every other m ember of the wedding party, Nafas is also required to show her face and answer questions. The cam era focuses on her face as the burqa casts a grill-like shadow over her eyes. Taliban: 'What is your nam e?' Nafas: 'Nafas.' Taliban: 'Who are you?' Nafas: 'I'm the bride's cousin'. Nafas lowers her burqa. The cam era swaps positions – from looking at Nafas to looking as Nafas. It sees, and we see, what she sees – the sun obscured through the heavy m esh of the burqa. With all of us – Nafas, cam era, audience – fixed on this second eclipse of the sun, Nafas' English voiceover begins. 'I'd always escaped from jails that im prisoned Afghan wom en. But now I'm a captive in every one of those prisons. Only for you, m y sister'. The final credits roll as the solar eclipse replaces the burqa eclipse. Of this w orld Despite the surreal cinem atography, Kandahar is insistently of this world. As the director explained, 'The reality of Afghanistan is surreal in itself … When you watch people who've lost their legs in explosions take a shovel and use it as a leg, it seem s surreal, but it's reality'. Nelofer Pazira, whose real-life search for a friend was indeed fictionalised into this film , also rem arked, ‘It is a true story … I play m yself in the film, a wom an searching for her sister in the prisons of this world. All the wom en suffering in m y country are my sisters’. Nafas, both through her vocation and her journey, embodies the quasi-docum entary aspect of the film , which has little tim e for heroism , m ystery or adventure. We are told at the outset that she is a journalist in Canada, a professional identity she enacts by reporting all her encounters into a tape recorder for her sister. Her journey represents less an heroic rescue m ission than it does a series of necessary encounters with Afghanis and Afghanistans, with an earthly city in darkness as its destination. The Afghan landscape is presented as a glittering wound that dem ands attention in itself and for itself. Anchored in contrasting cinem atic and storytelling styles, Kandahar fashions a gram m atical structure www.openDem ocracy.net based upon three prim ary sets of tensions – place and placelessness, progress and non-progress, lightness and darkness – that it explores in turn – spatially, tem porally, and m orally. Place The place and placelessness of Afghanistan, for exam ple, becom e the symbolic spatial terrain the film 's characters n egotiate: crisscrossin g Kandahar's landscapes, none of them has a stable place. Indeed, all the characters we m eet are not only in m otion, they are out of place: the Afghan refugees in Iran; Khak in his religious boarding school; the Am erican doctor in Afghanistan; the one-handed m an in a burqa; and Nafas herself, who wanders from place to place within and beyond Afghanistan. It is the one character we never m eet, and yet who dom inates the narrative, who is firm ly in place. This is Nafas' sister, legless and alone in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Crippled in body and spirit, she cannot wander, and ultim ately she cannot hope. An absent presence who drives the film’s action, Nafas’ sister sym bolises m any things. She is Afghan wom en’s containment within social, cultural, and religious institutions. She is the absent identity of Afghan wom en, denied a public im age of their own through the burqa. ‘Perhaps this is why they are called blackheads’, Nafas speculates about these women whose individual identities are reduced to a collective category, and denied an image of their own m aking. Kandahar's sym bolic and narrative concentration on the obscured identity of Afghan women's individuality and im age is also a m etaphor for Afghanistan as a whole. Makhm albaf has described Afghanistan as 'a country without an im age'. Again, '…Afghanistan is a nation without a picture. Afghan women are faceless: 10 m illion out of the 20 m illion population don't get a chance to be seen'. And, to the outside world, Afghanistan appears to be 'a land without a face'. Getting one's bearings in and about this half-faceless place is not only difficult – it m ay be dangerous. By contrasting what appear to be open, faceless landscapes with the daily restrictions on and resistances of the distinct individuals who inhabit them , the film depicts how political, cultural, and religious conventions have eroded the individuality and im age of Afghanistan, transform ing everything – even its people – into m inefields. As the doctor tells Nafas, 'In Afghanistan, everyone is either a threat or an opportunity'. Tim e There is a sim ilar challenge in the film's exploration of opposed tem poralities – progressive and non3 Not without m y sister: imagining a m oral Am erica in “Kandahar” progressive. The outside world is forever writing Afghanistan into progressive narratives, be they earthly narratives of capitalism , socialism , or em pire, or theological narratives of progress toward a purer form of Islam . The film is a com m ent on the nonprogressive effects of these tem poral im positions, western and eastern alike. Nafas has three days by the end of which she m ust find her sister or risk her suicide – yet Kandahar screens scene after scene which underscores the futility of im posing a progressive tem porality onto this pre-m illennial Afghanistan. The film m akes this point in three ways – by em phasising a cyclical tem porality over a linear, progressive one, by recording all journeys in Afghanistan as interrupted or incomplete, and by rem arking on the effects of the selective incorporation of ‘progress’ into Afghanistan. into hope. This translation is perform ed prim arily through Nafas. While she m ay or m ay not ever arrive in Kandahar, her journey seem s to be as m uch about collecting encounters that will inspire her sister, her sisters, and herself with hope, as it is about ultim ately arriving at her destination. Kandahar is about the journey, not about the journey’s end. Morality This is not to say that Kandahar does not articulate a basis for progress. It does so very clearly. The basis for progress, it suggests, is the very same as the basis for hope that Nafas finds on her journey. It is the hum anity and hum anitarianism of the Afghans she m eets. Morally, Kandahar codes hum anity according to a sim ple dualism of light vs. dark. What is light is good; Morally , Kandahar codes Tem porally, the film is a narrative hum anity according to a sim ple what is dark is evil. What is light loop, beginning and ending at the and good is hum anity; what is dark very sam e place. The first and last dualism of light vs. dark. W hat an d evil ar e social, cu ltu r al, im ages of the film – the repetition of is light is good; w hat is dark is political, and religious forces within a solar eclipse, itself a cyclical event, evil. and beyond Afghanistan like the m arking as it does the recurrence of Taliban, civil wars, and proxy wars. specific orbital alignments – are an As with its handling of space and announcem ent of cyclical time, as tim e, the film constructs a tension are the film 's first and final narrative sequences. Not in its em ploym ent of this m oral dichotom y. On the one only do we see the sam e encounter between Nafas and hand, the film is an allegory about the threat of light the Taliban on the outskirts of Kandahar, but we see descending into darkness. On the other hand, the film them through the sam e shots and hear them through chronicles how the light of hum anity repeatedly shines the sam e dialogue, the repetition underscoring the through this darkness. Without exception, the m any ways in which cyclical time – the tim e of the characters of this film stand for the goodness of eclipse – is cheating progressive tim e, for we never see hum anity and their struggles against darkness. Nafas progress to her destination. This is m ost obviously the case with Nafas, but we find Indeed, not one of the m any journeys recounted in the goodness and its struggle against evil scripted into the film is com pleted. There is no arrival, whether of core of every other character as well. The young girls in individual characters, the one-legged m en racing the refugee cam p exhibit an innocence/ lightness which toward prosthetic legs parachuting to the ground, or is about to be risked upon their return to Afghanistan. the droves of presum ably soon-to-be refugees Nafas So, too, does Khak – a young boy we first encounter in passes along the road travelling in the opposite the m adaris – struggle against darkness as he naively direction. Repeated non-arrival speaks to the history negotiates the religious and econom ic m inefields of and historical possibility of Afghanistan. Historically, Afghanistan. Expelled from school and desperate for Afghanistan has experienced ‘progress’ selectively. As m oney to support his fatherless fam ily, he still m akes a the doctor tells Nafas, ‘Weapons are the only m odern gift to Nafas' sister of the ring he scavenged from a things in Afghanistan’. Kandahar is unreservedly skeleton, a ring that Nafas refuses to buy. critical of this particular form of progress. But it does Goodness is not m erely associated with the innocence not thereby eschew progress itself, whatever that m ay of youth or with its protection. Characters who long be. It sim ply refuses to nam e it, to decide what it may ago lost their innocence are also portrayed as innately be for the Afghanistan it portrays. It does this by good. The refugee fam ily – Nafas' first guide – is a deliberately holding open a space for progress, by m etaphor for the wider Afghan community and the keeping every storyline open – and by its translation of possibility of peace am ong warring Afghan factions, m ovement, whether progressive or non-progressive, www.openDem ocracy.net 4 Not without m y sister: imagining a m oral Am erica in “Kandahar” com posed as it is of a husband and wives of different ethnic backgrounds. The shyster is sym pathetically drawn even as he talks the Red Cross out of a pair of legs he intends to sell. He is not a bad m an, the film suggests, but just a m an in economic need trying to survive like everyone else. Although his agreement to take Nafas to Kandahar is rooted in their economic bargain, on the journey he does this selflessly, all the while putting him self at great risk. An even better exam ple is the Am erican doctor. Having com e to Afghanistan in search of God, the doctor begins this search in all the wrong places – in war and violence. Enlightened by the poverty and neglect of the people he encounters, he lays down his weapons to become a doctor, a conversion that represents the possibility for the transformation of the hum an spirit. While everyone who offers to guide Nafas to Kandahar disappoints her, no one betrays her, even though betrayal is always possible. The refugee fam ily could have taken Nafas' m oney when they them selves were robbed. Khak could have reported Nafas to the authorities for speaking directly to the doctor. The doctor could have used his gun against Nafas, robbed her, and turned her in. And the shyster could have traded Nafas and her concealed tape recorder to the Taliban for his own freedom when he him self was captured. None of these things happens. But just as the film depicts im ages, journeys, bodies, and histories as incomplete, so it stresses the incom pleteness of an individually-based hum anist m oral gram m ar. For while part of the point of Kandahar is to show how hum anity's struggle for goodness and hope often prevails even under the threat of total darkness, the film 's subject is as m uch 'negligent hum anity' as it is individual Afghan trium phs. Yes, the hum an spirit conquers many obstacles. But it shouldn't have to. War and its legacies like landm ines, poverty, fam ine, and oppression persist in wounding Afghanistan and Afghanis. While there are com plex dom estic and international origins to these problem s, both the west and the east bear responsibility not only for their adventures in Afghanistan but for their neglect of the Afghan people. Kandahar is not an invitation for west and east once again to write their desires onto what they too often regard as an em pty landscape. Afghanistan has m any im ages, the film points out, if one will only notice them . It is not up to either west or east to 'com plete' Afghanistan through their visions of this space/ tim e, which the film notes have only helped render the country a battleground. As a critique of how domestic an d in ter n ation al fun dam en talist vision s of www.openDem ocracy.net Afghanistan have reduced its people to poverty, hunger, and violence, Kandahar both enacts and calls for a re-envisioning of Afghanistan by those who gaze upon it as if their vision were in no way im paired, as if they saw this space/ time for what it 'is'. Subtly yet persistently Kandahar suggests it is not only those within Afghanistan who are suffering from im paired vision. The west and the east, so often seeking to see them selves in heroic adventures in foreign lands, fail to see this country for itself. Staring at Afghanistan without seeing it, like those who stare at an eclipse, west and east are too often blinded by their own projects and their own desires. The film is targeted to an English-speaking audience, to whom it reports on how their legacies of heroic encounters with Afghanistan have lacerated its landscape and its people in the nam e of earthly or spiritual enlightenm ent. This is why the film chooses an outsider (an Am erican doctor) as its sym bolic em bodiment of the possibility of hum an spiritual transform ation and the hum anitarianism such a transform ation m akes possible. Kandahar testifies to the urgency of this m oral encounter, before the sun disappears fully behind the m oon. Bush’s Kandahar It is uncanny the extent to which the official US discourse on the war on terror reflects the gram m atical structure of frustration that m akes Makhm albaf’s Kandahar meaningful. Both are characterised by a double tem poral fram e of necessary progress versus cyclicality. J ust as Nafas urgently needs to find her sister before hope is eclipsed by darkness, so too in official US discourse does the US urgently need to capture Osam a bin Laden before m ore dark terrorist acts are comm itted against “the west”. Yet when m ajor US m ilitary activities officially ended in Afghanistan with the fall of the Taliban and the establishment of an interim Afghan government, not enough was known about bin Laden’s whereabouts to capture him . Like Nafas’ attem pt, US m ilitary activity begins and ends at the sam e place, with necessary progress frustrated. With the sim ultaneous bom bing of four passenger trains in Madrid on 11 March 20 0 4, and sim ilar bombing of the London transportation system on 7 J uly 20 0 5, Am erica’s 9/ 11 seem s to have been repeated in an echo that also extended its links to the second Gulf war (20 0 3). By widening the fram e from Afghanistan to Iraq, the non-progressive cyclicality of the official US narrative on the war on terror is m erely replayed in another location. ‘Gulf war II’ – itself a redux of the war on 5 Not without m y sister: imagining a m oral Am erica in “Kandahar” ‘Afghan wom en know, through hard experience, what the rest of the world is discovering: The brutal oppression of wom en is a central goal of the terrorists … The plight of wom en and children in Afghanistan is a m atter of deliberate hum an cruelty, carried out by those who seek to intim idate and control. Civilised people throughout the world are speaking out in horror – not only because our hearts break for the wom en and children in Afghanistan, but also because in Afghanistan we see the world the terrorists would like to im pose on the rest of us … Fighting brutality against wom en and children is not the expression of a specific culture; it is the acceptance of our com m on hum anity – a com m itm ent shared by Read onto the US war on terror, Makhm albaf’s people of good will on every continent’. Kandahar is a dam ning critique of US post-9/ 11 foreign policy. Yet President Bush latched onto this film to help For the Bush adm inistration, Kandahar – which m akes justify his bombing of Afghanistan. How was this an urgent plea for international hum anitarian assistance for Afghanis to the English speaking world – became a possible? cinem atic lifting of the veil on Afghan wom en and, more One factor was its release date. Although it was screened broadly, on Afghanistan itself. In both the US in art houses and at film festivals before 9/ 11, m ost Departm ent of State ‘ Report on the Taliban’s War Am ericans first heard about and saw Kandahar in Against Women’ (20 0 1), released imm ediately following November 20 0 1, a m ere two m onths after 9/ 11. The Laura Bush’s radio address and the com m ents of the tim ing could not have been better for the Bush First Lady at the Republican National Convention three adm inistration. Traum atised by the events of 9/ 11, many years later, Makhm albaf’s chosen symbol of oppression, US citizens were urgently asking the question ‘why do the burqa, has been neatly appropriated. As Laura Bush they hate us?’ One would be hard pressed to find another told delegates, ‘After years of being treated as virtual m om ent in US history when so m any Am ericans so selfprisoners in their homes by the Taliban, the wom en of consciously went in search of a m oral com pass, asking Afghanistan are going back to work … And wasn’t it not just ‘why do they hate us?’, but the follow-on wonderful to watch the Olym pics and see that beautiful question ‘and what should we do about that?’ Afghan sprinter race in long pants and a t-shirt, The Bush adm inistration responded by declaring war on exercising her new freedom while respecting the terror, which the vast m ajority of US citizens supported traditions of her country’. at the tim e. When the Taliban refused to turn in Osam a In the official US story, the US m ay have gone to bin Laden, the adm inistration declared war on Afghanistan for all the wrong reasons, but its joining of Afghanistan and began its bombing campaign of terrorist hum anitarianism to the rescue of Afghan wom en training camps and Taliban positions. The US response enabled it to bring Makhmalbaf’s story to its version of a to 9/ 11, therefore, was aggressive and vengeful but not happy ending. It could do this, however, only by going a necessarily moral. Posing convincingly as a nation of dostep beyond Makhm albaf, rem inding him and the world gooders remained a problem . How could this extensive that it is som etimes necessary to use m ilitary force to bombing cam paign that disrupted and destroyed the realise hum anitarian goals. By bom bing Afghanistan, the lives of so m any Afghans be seen as doing any good? Bush adm inistration urged, the US was m aking a (m oral) This is where the Bush adm inistration turned to difference in Afghanistan. Kandahar. Never m ind that Kandahar offers a dam ning Is the US really saving sisters, you m ay ask, or are these critique of foreign adventures in Afghanistan. In sisters rescuing for the US the faltering fiction of its own November 20 0 1, George W. Bush and UK Prim e hum anitarianism ? From the perspective of the official Minister Tony Blair rejustified the war in hum anitarian US story, the answer to this question is – ‘who cares?’ term s, and they paraded their wives Laura Bush and Am erica’s m ission is too im portant to get sidetracked Cherie Blair before the press as ‘universal into ‘politically correct’ conversations about gender or sisters/ women’ to argue the case for Afghan wom en. im perialism . That m onth, in the first full-length radio address ever But it is not so easy to quiet this conversation. One way given by a US First Lady, Laura Bush told Am ericans: or another, the fem inised other eventually finds a way to terror in Afghanistan (not to m ention the first Gulf war and some would argue increasingly, Vietnam ) – did result in the overthrow and capture of Saddam Hussein. But the official US aim of instituting a dem ocratic order in Iraq and m aking Iraq safe for the Iraqi people is nowhere near being achieved. Arguably, far worse than even these failures to bring security to post-Saddam Iraq (repeating US failure to secure Afghanistan outside a sm all zone around Kabul) is the m irroring of US security tactics to those of Saddam ’s in the Abu Ghraib prison (itself recalling US treatm ent of suspected terrorist ‘detainees’ in Cam p X-Ray at Guantanam o Bay). www.openDem ocracy.net 6 Not without m y sister: imagining a m oral Am erica in “Kandahar” grab our attention. Like the pictures from the Abu as long as it m istakes the fem inine as a passive, willing Ghraib prison that circulated in the global m edia, US object of its own m oral rescue, rather than see it as an m oral m istakes come back to haunt it. They will do so for active m oral agent in its own right. Cy nthia W eber is a professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Lancaster, England. She has described her research as broadly conceived of as Critical W orld Order Studies, a term that convey s both engagem ent w ith core disciplinary International Relations (IR) them es like sovereignty , intervention, and global governance w hile m arking the intra- and inter-disciplinarity nature of the w ork. Her research addresses the follow ing question: 'how do hegem onic discourses function, and how m ight they be resisted and/ or reconstructed?' This question stem s from a long-standing concern w ith US global hegem ony , not only through US foreign policy but also through globalised expressions of hegem ony found in popular culture, gender, and sexuality . Cy nthia W eber has previously w ritten on the relationship betw een sovereignty and intervention, US foreign policy (especially in relation to the Caribbean), and various theoretical debates in IR theory (like gender, constructivism , and post-structuralism ). Her latest book is entitled Im agining Am erica at War: Morality, Politics, and Film w hich takes up the question of US hegem ony in the context of Septem ber 11. By w eaving together IR theory , cultural studies, and gender and queer studies, the book focuses on Am erica's em erging m oralities in relation to the w ar on terror. It does so by tracing how popular film s circulated in the US in the afterm ath of Septem ber 11 both m ark Am erica's m oral m ovem ent about post-Septem ber 11 foreign policy and participate in the reconstruction of Am erican m orality nationally and internationally . How Am erican m orality is conceived and reconceived – not only by foreign policy officials but by every day Am ericans — is vital to the practice of US global hegem ony , w hich is central to how w e think about international security and global governance. Cy nthia is currently , w orking on tw o projects. The first, an hour-long docum entary on the topic of Post-9/ 11 US citizenship, the second an on-going project on 'the aesthetics of fear' as it is expressed politically through events like Septem ber 11, reactions to the 7/ 7 London bom bings (especially through the w e'renotafraid w ebsite), and Copyright © Cynthia Weber , 0 9 Novem ber 20 0 5. Published by openDem ocracy Ltd. Perm ission is granted to reproduce this article for personal, non-com m ercial use only. In order to circulate internally or use this material for teaching or other com mercial purposes you will need to obtain an institutional subscription. Reproduction of this article is by arrangem ent only. openDem ocracy articles are available for syndication. For institutional subscriptions, syndication and press inquiries, please call ++44 (0 ) 20 7 60 8 20 0 0 . www.openDem ocracy.net 7