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Monday Night Book Club: October 20, 2008

By Alexa

Good evening, and welcome to the grand opening of NION's Monday Night Book Club. I'll be your hostess.

I want to thank you all and encourage you to be comfortable, have a tea or coffee or adult beverage of your choice (or a virtual tall hazelnut cappuccino with a shot of vanilla) and join me in a discussion of books which I plan to start every Monday night, but due to this marvels of the 'tubes, we can continue at our leisure throughout the week.

Valtin has suggested our first book for discussion, Torture and the Twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad by Marnia Lazreg.

I'm going to post an excerpt with permission, but want to thank Valtin for the excellent suggestion.

Torture and the Twilight of Empire was published in 2008 by Princeton University Press. So that all who want to join in the discussion will have time to read the book first, how does about 4 weeks from tonight, on Monday, November 18, 2008, sound? If you can't get this book through your local library, here are a few places to purchase it:

Barnes and Noble for $23 (member price), $26 (nonmember).

Powell's for $20.

If the historical context of colonialism facilitated the emergence of torture as a method of control, the war itself crystallized the stakes and clarified for the military the importance of the use of unbridled force and terror. War, as a situation in which normative restraints on life and death are suspended, has close affinities with torture. As Elaine Scarry has shown, war's relation to torture is mediated by the labor of "civilization," a concept dear to colonial officers in Algeria. Torture partakes in the work of the civilization in whose name it is practiced, and in which it finds its justification against the alleged barbarity of the enemy. War and torture feed into each other in the same way that torture and terror do.

Justifications of torture play a crucial role in its routinization; they require for their efficacy a suspension of disbelief: They harness an array of reasons of unequal value and importance that must be accepted as a whole. If looked at separately, each loses its weight, weakening the whole. The dictionary points to the root of justification as making "just," whereas explanation "makes flat." I take the position that intentional assault against the body physical or the body social is not justifiable, albeit explainable. In wars, "just" or "unjust," belligerents are bound by rules of engagement, which are meant to avoid or minimize the occurrence of atrocities. In Algeria, justifications of torture found fertile ground in the myths spun on natives' flawed nature and a narcissistic view of French cultural supremacy.

In this book, I do not review or engage in discussions of what degree of physical punishment rises to the level of torture as these generally constitute preliminaries to defending torture as a legitimate form of interrogation. I simply propose that torture is the deliberate and willful infliction of various degrees of pain using a number of methods and devices, psychological as well as physical, on a defenseless, and powerless person for the purpose of obtaining information that a victim does not wish to reveal or does not have. It is the powerlessness of the victim, the inability to defend herself and her absolute vulnerability to the torturer that captures the specific character of torture. Slapping a victim may seem a mild form of punishment, and not torture. But, when the slap is inflicted repeatedly by a large soldier, or a group of soldiers going at it together, in a manner such that the victim loses her balance and her hearing, it becomes a method of torture. Torture is methodical: It has a beginning, an evolution, and an end. It unfolds holistically, according to a design, and with various tools, of which the slapping hand is one. It is multilocal and multimodal. It cannot be conceived piecemeal. It is the totality of the torture situation that needs to be grasped in order to understand that torture is not definable in terms of bodily harm or psychological torment alone. It is not only what goes on during the electrical or knife-carving sessions that defines torture. It is also the preliminaries-what French torturers called "softening" the victims-as well as what happens between torture sessions that could last one to three days, and at times several weeks on and off.

The torture situation is not summed up by a torturer and his victim thrown together in a room with a few instruments. It is a structured environment with a texture of its own, a configuration of meanings, a logic and rationale without which physical, let alone, psychic, pain is incomprehensible and ineffective. In the social situation of torture, memory, identity, and culture weave a network of ideas and perceptions, experiences and ideals that define a genuine battle between two embodied realities: in this case, colonial France with its unbounded power and mythologies, and colonized Algeria, with its claim to a full share of humanity.

Conversely, the fact of doing torture allows the torturer to voice (albeit freely) his identity claims. General Aussaresses could not help evoking the Battle of Valmy of 1793 while torturing an Algerian in 1957. Torture thus appears as a political practice that unfolds in a social situation from which it is inseparable. In this respect, the stated end of torture, intelligence, does not and cannot define torture: Torture in Algeria was not primarily about information, although some useful information was collected. Information can be had without the use of torture as a French intelligence officer found out.

Emphasis mine. This is one of the best characterizations of torture I've ever read, incidentally.

It is the powerlessness of the victim, the inability to defend herself and her absolute vulnerability to the torturer that captures the specific character of torture.

I find this quite striking as well.

Torture is methodical: It has a beginning, an evolution, and an end.

From the little I've read so far, this fascinating book is one I'm very much looking forward to discussing with my NION amigos.

For tonight's book club, I'd like to get a sampling of the kind of books and authors you enjoy. Please note, the books we discuss won't always directly related to human rights, as there are many peripherally-related histories, country studies, psychological and sociological works, as well as biographies that make a real contribution to human rights. In fact, some of the fiction I've read in the last few years speaks to human rights through narrative.

Among my favorite authors are Andre Dubos III, Edwidge Danticatt, and yes, Junot Diaz. I also love anything written by Khalid Hosseini. Who are your favorite authors?

Amazon and eBay have used copies for about $8-11.  

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on October 20, 2008 (boomark / email).