Torture is not as universally condemned as it once was. 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 important book, Donatella Di Cesare provides a critical perspective on torture in all its dimensions. She seeks to capture the peculiarity of an extreme and methodical 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 while he is still alive. Torture is a threat wherever the defenceless find themselves in the hands of the strong: in prisons, in migrant camps, in nursing homes, in centres for the disabled and in institutions for minors.
This impassioned book 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.
Tabella dei contenuti
Prologue vii
1 The Politics of torture 1
1 Without end? Torture in the twenty-first century 1
2 Torture and power 4
3 The dark backdrop of sacrifice: torture in the mechanisms of terror 9
4 Torture after the abolition of torture 13
5 The black phoenix 16
6 Torture and democracy 19
7 After 9/11: state of exception, pre-emptive torture 21
8 The debate over torture 25
9 The dilemma of ‘getting our hands dirty’: Thomas Nagel and Michael Walzer 28
10 Alan Dershowitz and the ‘torture warrant’ 33
11 The lesser evil is still an evil 38
12 24: the gentleman torturer 40
13 A political theology of torture 41
14 Why not torture the terrorist? The ticking time bomb 44
15 Dangerous, pseudo-philosophical tales 51
16 Illegitimacy: the torturer state 52
17 A shipwreck of human rights? 56
18 Human dignity in torture 59
2 Phenomenology of Torture 63
1 Defining torture: etymological notes 63
2 ‘Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world’ (Améry) 66
3 Torture, genocide, Holocaust 70
4 Killing and torturing 72
5 Between biopower and sovereign power 75
6 Anatomy of the butcher 77
7 Sade, the negation of the other, and the language of violence 78
8 From Torquemada to Scilingo: four portraits 81
9 Born torturers? 88
10 Pedro and the Captain 93
11 The victim’s secret 95
12 Saying the word ‘torture’ 97
13 On pain and suffering 98
14 Surviving one’s own death 101
3 The Administration of Torture 104
1 Giulio Regeni: the body of the tortured 104
2 Benjamin; or, on an ignominious institution 107
3 The G8 in Genoa 110
4 ‘No touch’ torture: on Stammheim prison 114
5 Desaparecidos: when death is denied 117
6 The CIA’s global Gulag 122
7 Guantánamo: a camp for the new millennium 126
8 Abu Ghraib: the photographs of shame 129
9 Women and sexual violence 131
10 In the hands of the stronger 134
11 Torments and torture marked ‘made in Italy’ 137
Epilogue 143
References 146
Index 156
Circa l’autore
Donatella Di Cesare is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome.
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