Torture
Samenvatting
Torture is not as universally condemned as it once was. After 9/11, its apologists could use the war on terror to justify a practice that has in fact never fallen completely out of use, in democracies no less than under dictatorships. From Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib prisons to the death of Giulio Regeni, countless recent cases have shocked public opinion. But if we want to defend the human dignity that torture violates, simple indignation is not enough.
In this penetrating text, Donatella Di Cesare seeks insight from philosophers, playwrights, directors and poets to provide a critical perspective on torture in all its dimensions, culminating in a wholly original phenomenology of torture . She seeks to capture the peculiarity of an extreme, systematic, methodical violence. This is a violence where the tormentor calculates and measures out pain so that he can hold off the victim s death, allowing him to continue to exercise his sovereign power. For the victim, being tortured is like experiencing his own death even while he is still alive. It is also a violence inextricably linked with power. Torture is a threat wherever the defenceless find themselves in the hands of the strong: in prisons, on psychiatric wards, in migrant camps, in nursing homes, in centres for the disabled, and in institutions for minors.
This impassioned book equips us to address critically the many forms of torture which continue to occur across our societies today. It will appeal to students and scholars of philosophy and political theory, as well as to anyone committed to defending human rights as universal and inviolable.
Specificaties
Inhoudsopgave
Chapter One. The politics of torture
1. Without end? Torture in the twenty–first century
2. Torture and Power
3. The dark backdrop of sacrifice. Torture in the mechanisms of terror
4. Torture after the abolition of torture
5. The Black Phoenix
6. Torture and democracy
7. After 9/11. State of exception, pre–emptive torture
8. The debate over torture
9. The dilemma of getting our hands dirty . Thomas Nagel and Michael Walzer
10. Alan Dershowitz and the torture warrant
11. The lesser evil is still an evil
12. 24. The gentleman torturer
13. A political theology of torture
14. Why not torture the terrorist? The ticking time bomb
15. Dangerous, pseudo–philosophical tales
16. Illegitimacy. The torturer–state
17. A shipwreck of human rights?
18. Human dignity in torture
Chapter Two. Phenomenology of Torture
1. Defining torture. Etymological notes
2. Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world – Améry
3. Torture, genocide, Holocaust
4. Killing and torturing
5. Between biopower and sovereign power
6. Anatomy of the butcher
7. Sade, the negation of the other, and the language of violence
8. From Torquemada to Scilingo. Four portraits
9. Born torturers?
10. Pedro and the Captain
11. The victim s secret
12. Saying the word torture
13. On pain and suffering
14. Surviving one s own death
Chapter Three. The Administration of Torture
1. Giulio Regeni. The body of the tortured
2. Benjamin; or, on an ignominious institution
3. The G8 in Genoa
4. No touch torture. On Stammheim prison
5. Desaparecidos, disappeared. When death is denied
6. The CIA s global gulag
7. Guantánamo. A camp for the new millennium
8. Abu Ghraib. The photographs of shame
9. Women and sexual violence
10. In the hands of the stronger
11. Torments and torture marked made in Italy
Epilogue
References