A Liberal Use of "Torture": Pain, Personhood, and Precedent in the U.S. Federal Definition of Torture

Ongoing debates about the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used in the Global War on Terrorism, and the failure to prosecute officials who authorized these acts, have revealed deep controversy and complexity within popular and legal understandings of the term "torture." One source of this controversy lies in the U.S. federal definition of torture itself. A close reading of 18 U.S.C. § 2340 reveals a uniquely liberal-modernist conception of subjectivity and experience that offers inadequate legal protection against the "no-touch" techniques that have become paradigmatic of contemporary torture. Specifically, the moral and epistemological ambiguities within its legal categories of "pain" and "personhood" result in a law that effectively permits rather than prohibits the preferred torture techniques of liberal-democratic states. Following the critical-analytic work of this argument, the article offers an appeal for the inclusion of a more robustly rhetorical conception of experience in the formulation of a new legal definition of torture.