Torture

Contents

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pp. v-vi

Acknowledgments

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pp. vii-viii

This volume emerged out of the symposium "Torture and the Human Body" held at Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, on February 27, 2009. Organized by the Global Studies Initiative...

Introduction

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pp. 3-24

Given the events of the last decade, the topic of torture, democracy, and the human body hardly needs any justification. Yet it is its apparent obviousness that makes the topic all the more...

1. Torture and Democracy: What Now?

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pp. 25-45

On January 21, 2010, Matthew Alexander, a former U.S. Air Force officer, wrote in the New York Times that American interrogation policies under President Barack Obama remain...

2. Now That We’ve Tortured: Image, Guilt, Consequence

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pp. 46-66

Let me begin with what today has been a key word: amnesia. It is a striking word, and it makes a provocative point. When it comes to torture as practiced by the United States during the war on...

3. “We Are All Torturers Now” : Accountability after Abu Ghraib

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pp. 67-100

"We are all torturers now." So reads the title of an op-ed written by Mark Danner and published in the New York Times in January 2005. The gist of Danner's argument, which followed revelations of the abuse meted out by U.S. security personnel at the...

4. Dying Is Not Permitted: Sovereignty, Biopower, and Force-Feeding at Guantánamo Bay

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pp. 101-128

In the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prisoners captured in Afghanistan and around the world are held in indefinite detention without a juridical decision as to their guilt or innocence. Since the time the detention center opened in July 2002, 775 prisoners have...

5. The Torture Device: Debate and Archetype

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pp. 129-157

Military linguist Erik Saar served as an interpreter at Guantánamo Bay for six months beginning in December 2002. Leaked portions of the manuscript for his book Inside the...

6. Specters of the Muselmann: Guantánamo Bay Penalogical Theme Park and the Torture of Omar Khadr

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pp. 158-187

On September 8, 2006, the guerrilla artist Banksy staged another of his politico-artistic interventions, installing an inflatable doll dressed as a Guantánamo Bay detainee on the grounds of Disneyland...

7. This Fragile Body: Susan Crile's 'Abu Ghraib: Abuse of Power'

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pp. 188-214

When the Abu Ghraib torture photographs first became public in April 2004, they met with an array of mostly predictable responses. These responses ranged in tone from the vehemence of moral outrage, to the defeated confirmation that "this is to...

8. Sri Lanka: Landscapes of Massacre

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pp. 215-244

Shortly after the savage end to the savage thirty-year war in Sri Lanka in May 2009, a video filmed on a phone camera made global headlines. It showed the naked, blindfolded body of a man, hands bound, legs spread-eagled, being forced down into the...

Bibliography

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pp. 245-264

Notes on Contributors

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pp. 265-268

Index

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pp. 269-283