Torture

Power, Democracy, and the Human Body

Edited by Shampa Biswas and Zahi Zalloua

Narrated by David Gilmore

Available from Audible

Book published by University of Washington Press

The counterterrorism policies following September 11, 2001, brought the definition and legitimacy of torture to the forefront of political, military, and public debates. This timely volume explores the question of torture through multiple lenses by situating it within systems of belief, social networks of power, and ideological worldviews. Individual essays examine the boundaries of what is deemed legitimate political violence for the sake of state security, the immediate and long-term effects of torture on human and social bodies, the visual and artistic representations of torture, how certain people are dehumanized to make it acceptable to torture them, and how we understand complicity in and the ethical boundaries of torture.

The contributors include Stephanie Athey, Mark Danner, Julia Ireland, Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn, Suvendrini Perera, Joseph Pugliese, Darius Rejali, and Lauren Wilcox.

Shampa Biswas is associate professor of politics at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and coeditor of Margins, Peripheries, and Excluded Bodies: International Relations and States of Exception.

Zahi Zalloua is associate professor of French and general studies at Whitman College, author of Montaigne and the Ethics of Skepticism, and editor of The Comparatist and Montaigne After Theory, Theory After Montaigne.

REVIEWS:

“The topic is of pressing contemporary relevance, and this volume does an excellent job of offering interdisciplinary insight into a controversial, complex issue.... the collection is a highly successful examination of torture. Summing up: Recommended.”

—Choice