Torture

ISBN-13: 9781509524365 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 180 str.

Donatella Di Cesare

Opis

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.

Recenzje

"After 9/11, popular culture and some pseudo-intellectual arguments have undermined the universal moral condemnation of torture we could once count on. Donatella Di Cesare dissects these false positions one by one. Her book makes a wonderful contribution to the legal, ethical and political debates about torture because it highlights the radical immorality and unscientific basis of the myths created about the benefits of torture in 'keeping us safe'." Juan Mendez, Professor of Human Rights Law at the American University and former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment "Donatella Di Cesare is one of the most important voices in contemporary European philosophy. Her book is a darkly knowing, lucid and relentless philosophical primer on torture in the age of terrorism. If human dignity is to survive these bleak times, the fierce lessons of Di Cesare?s study will need to be absorbed." Jay Bernstein, New School for Social Research "An important study of barbarism calls for citizens to be vigilant and to resist." Times Higher Education

Spis treści

Prologue 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

O autorze

Donatella Di Cesare is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Sapienza University of Rome.