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Course of Study:
(SOCI30062) Perspectives on Power
Title:
The body in pain; the making and unmaking of the world (Chapter one, section
IV)
Name of Author:
Elaine Scarry
Name of Publisher:
Oxford University Press
50
UNMAKING
hu band' v01 ce, my child' , are the e o compelling ound the ound of real
human hurt or are they ound made up to mock and torment me?
In thi clo ed world where conversation i d1 pla ed by interrogation, where
twman pee h 1 bro en ff in n
ion and d1 · tegrate into human c~e ,
where even tho e cne can be broken off to become one more weapon again t
the person him elf or again ta friend, in thi world of broken and .evered voice. ,
it is not urpri ing that the mo t powerful and h aling moment 1 often that m
which a human vo1 e, though till evered, floating free, omehow reache the
person who e ole reality had become hi own unthinkable i olation, hi deep
rporeal engulfment. The pri oner who, alone in long olitary confinement and
repeatedly tortured, found within a loaf of bread a matchbox containing a mall
piece of paper that had written on 1t the ingle, whi pered word "Corragio!",
"Take courage";~Q the Uruguayan man arranging for ome tangible ignal that
hi word had reached their de tinauon, "My darling, 1f you receive thi letter
60
put a half a bar of Boa oap in the next parcel " ; the impri oned Chilean women
who on Chn tmas Eve ang with all their might to their men in a eparate camp
the ong they had written, "Take heart , Jo e, my love" and who, through the
abu ive houts of guard ordering ilence , heard "faintly on the wind .. the
an wering ong of the men' ' 61 - the e act and their multiplication in the extenive and ongoing attempt of Amne ty International to re tore to each per on
tortured h1 or her voice, to u e language to let pain give an accurate account
of 1t elf, to pre ent regime that torture with a deluge of letters and telegram ,
a deluge of voice peaking on behalf of, voice peaking in the voice of, the
person 1lenced, the e act that return to the pri oner h1 mo t elemental political
ground a well a hi p ychic content and den ity are finally almo t phy iolog1cal
in their power of alteration . A torture con isl of act that magnify the way in
which pain de troy a per on ' world , elf, and voice, o the e other act that
re tore the v01ce become not only a denunciation of the pain but almo t a
diminution of the pain, a partial rever al of the proce of torture it elf. An act
of human contact and concern, whether occurring here or in private context of
ympathy, provide the hurt per on with worldly elf-ex ten ion: in acknowledging and expre ing another per on ' pain, or in articulating one of h1 nonbodily
concern while he 1 unable to , one human being who i well and free willingly
tum him elf into an image of the other' p ych1c or entient claim , an image
exi ting in the pace out ide the ufferer' body, projected out into the world
and held there intact by that per on' powers until the ufferer him elf regains
h1 own power f elf-exten ion . By holding that world in place, or by giving
the pain a place m the world, ympathy le en the power of ickne and pain,
counteract the force with which a per on in great pain or ickne can be
wallowed alive by the body .
To acknowledge the radical ubjectivity of pam 1 to acknowledge the imple
and ab olute incompat1b1hty of pam and the world . The urvival of each depend
The Structure of Torture
on its eparation from the other To bnng them together, to bring pain into the
world by objectifying it in language, i to de troy one of them. either, as in the
case of Amne ty Intemallonal and parallel effort in other areas, the pam i
objectified, articulated, brought into the world in uch a way that the pain itself
i dimini hed and de troyed; or alternatively, as in torture and parallel form of
adi m, the pain is at once objectified and fa! ified, articulated but made to refer
to omething el e and in the proce , the world, or ome dramatized urrogate
of the world, i de troyed . A the opening of thi chapter as erted and a the
previou de cription ha tried to how, torture is a form of avagery and tupidity
(word invoked here a literal de ignation rather than as di mi 1ve label ) that
ha a tructure . Thi tructure may be in part premeditated, eem for the mo l
part uncon ciou , and i in either ca e based on the nature of pain, the nature
of power, the interaction between the two, and the interaction between the
ultimate ource of each-the body, the locu of pain, and the voice, the Iocu
of power. It involve the invariable and simultaneou occurrence of three phenomena which, for the ake of description and . ummary, can be i olated into
three eparate and equent1al step .
IV. Three Simultaneous Phenomena In the Structure
of Torture
( l ) the infliction of pain
(2) the objectification of the subjective attributes of pain
(3) the translation of the objectified attributes of pain
into the insignia of power
The fir t of the three tep i the infliction of great phy ical pain on a human
bemg. Although thi i the mo t heinou part of the proce , it alone would
never accomph h the torturer' goal. One a pect of great pain-a acknowledged
by tho e who have uffered it in diver e political and private context , and a
a erted by tho e who have tud1ed it from the per pective of p ychology, philo ophy, and phy iology, and, finally, a become obviou to common en e
alone-i that it i to the individual e periencing it overwhelmingly pre ent,
more emphatically real than any other human experience, and yet i almo t
invi ible to anyone el e, unfelt , and unknown . Even prolonged , agonized human
cream , which pre on the hearer' con ciou ne in omething of the ame
way pain pre e on the con ciou ne of the per on hurt , convey only a limited
dimen ion of the sufferer' experience . It may be for thi rea on that image of
the human cream recur fairly often in the vi ual art . which for the mo t part
avoid depi lion of auditory e penen e . The very failure to convey the ound
52
UNMAKING
make the e repre entatlon arre ting and accurate; the open mouth with no ound
rea hmg any ne in the !>ketche , pamtmg , or film !>till of Grunewald, Stanzione,
Munch, Bacon. Bergman, or Et en tem, a human bemg o utterly con urned m
the act of makmg a ound that cannot be heard, coin tde with the way tn which
pam engulf the one m patn but remam unsen ed by anyone el e . For the
torturer, 1t 1 not enough that the pn oner e penence pam It!> reality, although
already mconte table to the ufferer, mu t be made equally mconte table to those
out tde the ufferer Pain 1 therefore made v1 tble m the multiple and elaborate
pro e e that evolve tn pr du mg tl.
In, then, the econd tep of torture, the ubjective characten tic of pain are
obje ttfied Although the pn oner' mtemal expenence may be close to or identical with that of a person uffering evere pain from bum or a troke or cancer
or phantom limb, 1t 1 , unlike thi other person' , imultaneou ly being externalized . The following attnbute belong equally to the felt-experience of patient
and pn oner, although it 1 only in the econd context (or in ome other area of
objectification) that they become gra pable from the out ide .
- The fir t, the mo t e ential, a pe t of pam 1s 1t heer aver 1vene . While
other en atlon have content that may be po 1t1ve , neutral , or negative, the very
content of pam 1 itself negation If to the per on m pam 1t doe not feel aver e,
and 1f it doe not m tum elicit in that person aver 1ve feeling toward it, it i
not in either ph1lo oph1cal d1 cus ion or p ychological definition of 1t called
pam 1> 2 Pam 1 a pure phys1 al experience of negation , an immediate en ory
rendenng of "agamst," of omethmg bemg agam tone, and of omething one
mu t be agam t. Even though 11 occur within one elf, 111 at once identified as
"not one elf," " not me ," a omethmg o ahen that it mu l nght now be gotten
nd of Tht internal physical expenence 1 m torture accompanied by 1t external
political equivalent, the presence in the pace out ide the body of a elf-proclaimed •'enemy ,·' omeone who m becoming the enemy become the human
embodiment of avers1vene s, he cea e to have any p ycholog1 al chara teri tic
or content other than that he 1 , like phy 1cal pam , " not me, " "again t me "
Although there are many aver e political context -an occupied town or a pri on,
for example-where the "agam tne " exi t in an 1mphcit and ilent tate of
readme , ex1 ts not now but only as an alway clo eby future, 1t i the very
nature of torture to m each pre ent moment identify , announce, a t out in brutality , accu at1on, and challenge the late of it own otheme , the tate of being
agajn t, the fact of bemg the enemy.
- A econd and third a peel of pam , closely related to the fir t, are the double
expenence of agency While pam t m part a profound en ory rendering of
"again t," 111 al o a rendenng of the " omething" that 1 again t, a omething
at once internal and external Even when there i an actual weapon pre ent, the
The Structure of Torture
ufferer may be dominated by a en e of internal agency: it has often been
observed that when a knife or a nail or pin enters the body, one feels not the
knife, nail or pm but one's own body, one's own body hurting one. Conver ely,
in the utter ab ence of any actual external cau e, there often arises a vivid en e
of external agency, a sen e apparent in our elementary, everyday vocabulary for
pain: knifelike pain , tabbing, boring, searing pain . In phy ical pain, then,
suicide and murder converge, for one feel acted upon, annihilated, by in ide
and out ide alike. The sense of elf-agency, vi ible m many dimen ion of torture,
i primarily dramatized there m the ritualized elf-betrayal of confe sion and
forced exerci e. The en e of external agency i objectified m the sy tematic
a s1mtlat1on of helter and c1vilizat1on mto the torturer' collection of weapon .
But m 1de and out 1de and the two fonn of agency ult1mately give way to and
merge with one another: confes ion and exerci e are a fonn of external a well
a internal agency mce one' own body and voice now no longer belong to
one elf; and the conversion of the phy ical and cultural etting into torture
in trument is internal as well as external ince it act a an image of the impact
of pain on human con ciou ne .
-Thi di olution of the boundary between in 1de and out ide give ri e to a
fourth a peel of the felt experience of phy ical pajn , an aJmo t ob cene conflation
of pnvate and public . It bring with it aJI the olitude of ab olute pnvacy with
none of 1t safety, all the elf-expo ure of the utterly public with none of its
pos ibility for camaraderie or hared experience. Arti tic objectifications of pain
often concentrate on thi combination of i olation and exposure. Ingmar Bergman ' film repeatedly couple phy ical pam with inten e moments of humiliation .
In the opening equence of Sawdust and Tinsel, for example, a cuckolded clown,
alone amid the jeers of watching oldiers, carrie the naked and impo ibly heavy
body of hi faithle s, cared for wife up a steep hill of rock that lice hi bare
feet. The temtin of Sophocle ' Philoctetes-the background against which we
watch and hear the agonized writhing of the wounded hero, writhing which o
repelled hi hipmate that they long ago abandoned him here-1 a mall i land
of jagged rock at once utterly cut off from homeland and humanity and utterly
open to the element . The olitary figure in the typical canva of Franci Bacon
i made emphatically alone by h1 position on a dai , by an arbitrary geometric
box in erted over him , and by hi naked pre ence against a unifonn (and in its
unifonnity , almo t ab olute) orange-red background; yet while he i inten ely
eparate from the viewer (a eparation Bacon wanted to heighten further by
having the canvas e covered with gla ) he i imultaneously mercile ly expo ed to u , not merely be au e he i undre ed, un hielded by any material or
clothing , but becau e hi melting body i turned in ide out, revealing the mo t
inward and ecret part of him . Thi combination, not u ually a in the e arti tic
objectificatio~ vi ible to an out ider but alway pre ent m the felt-experience
54
UNMAKING
of pain,
part of the ongoing external action and act1v1~y of torture, _for the
pn oner i forced to attend to the mo t intimate and mtenor fact of ha body
(pam, hunger, nau ea, exuahty, excretion) at a time whe~ there is_no beni~n
nvacy, for he 1 under continual urveillance, and there 1 no benign public,
there i no human conta t, but m tead only an ugly inverting of the two .
~or
-A fifth dimen ion of phy 1cal pam 1 it ability to de troy language, the power
of verbal objectification, a major ource of our elf-exten ion, a vehicle through
which the pain could be lifted out mto the world and eliminated . Before de troy•
mg language, 11 first monopolize language , become it only ubject: compla1_n1,
10 many way the nonpoht1cal equivalent of confe ion, become the exclu 1ve
mode of peech . Eventually the pain o deepen that the coherence of complaint
1 di placed by the ound antenor to learned language. The tendency of pain
not imply to re i t expre ion but to de troy the capacity for peech i in torture
reenacted m overt , exaggerated fonn . Even where the torturers do not pennanently eliminate the voice through mutilation or murder , they mime the work
of pam by temporanly breaking off the voice, making ll their own, making at
peak their word , making it cry out when they want it to cry, be ilent when
they want it ilence, turning it on and off, u ing 11 sound to abu e the one
who e voice 11 1 a well a other pn oners . The den ive connotation of "betrayal" urroundmg confe ion al o reveal m heightened fonn the proce by
which m nonpolitical contexts a per on ' complaint-filled, deteriorating, r ab ent
language ob cure and di credit ha need at the very moment when they are
mo t acute . Even m 1976 and 1977 when the American new media for the first
time began to devote pace and ympathetac attention to the problems of physical
pain , at was not unu ual to ee ometime in local paper article with headlines
uch a " A pain i a pain 1f you complain" and " Chronic pain can make you
,,6J
one.
-A ixth element of phy 1cal pam , one that overlap but 1 not quite cotenninou
with the prev1ou element , i 11 obhtera11on of the contents of con ciou ne .
Pain annihilate not only the object of complex thought and emotion but al o
the object of the mo t elemental act of perception . It may begin by de troying
ome intricate and demanding allegiance, but it may end (a i implied in the
expre ion " blinding pain ") by de troying one' ability amply to ee . In torture,
thi world d1 olution , acknowledged m confe ion , 1 mimed in the conver ion
into weapon and re ulting cancellation of all parts of the room a well a all
parts of the larger world that can be bodied forth in the torturer' action and
peech.
-A eventh aspect of pam , built on the first ix, 1 its totality Pam begin by
bemg " not one elf ' and ends by having eliminated all that i " not it elf." At
The Structure of Torture
first occurring only as an appalling but limited internal fact, it eventually occupies
the entire body and pills out into the realm beyond the body, take over all that
i inside and outside, makes the two obscenely fadi tingu1 hable, and ystematically destroy anything like language or world ex ten ion that i alien to it elf
and threatening to it claim . Terrifying for it narrowness, at nevertheless exhau ts and displace all el e until it eems to become the angle broad and
omnipresent fact of exi tence. From no matter what perspective pain i approached, its totality is again and again faced . Even neurological and physiological•descriptions repeatedly acknowledge the breadth of its presence. Its mastery
of the body, for' ex~ple, is ugge ted by the failure of many urgical attempt
to remove pain pathway becau e the body quickly , effortles ly, and endle sly
generate new pathway .6' Of it location in the brain, Melzack write :
It 1 traditionally a urned that pam sensation and re pon e are sub erved by a "pa.an
centre" m the bra.an. The concept of a pain centre, however, 1 totally inadequate
10 accounl for the complexity of pam . Indeed, the concepr 1 pure fiction, unless
virtually the whole bram is considered to be the pain centre, because the thalamus,
hypothalamu , brainstem reticular formation , bmbic y tern , panetal cortex, and
frontal cortex are all 1mphcated in pain perception. Other brain areas are obviously
involved in the emotional and motor feature of pa.an ...,
Thi ame totality i equally de criptive of felt-experience . Although other enation ometimes have the power to dimini h pain by di tracting the person's
attention, in prolonged and acute pain the body often begin to interpret all
sen ation as pain . S . W . Mitchell, a Cival War surgeon, a minor though prolific
noveli t, and a major figure in medical research and ob ervation of wound and
wound pain , write ,
Perhap few persons who are not phy 1c1an can realize the influeoce which longcontmued and unendurable pam may have upon both body and mmd. The older
books are full of case in which, after lancet wound , the mos! temble pain and
local pa m re ulted . When these had la ted for days or weeks , the whole urface
became hyperae thetic, and the en e grew to be only avenue for fre h and increa ing lortures, until every vibration, every change of hght, and even . . the effort
lo read brought on new agony. 66
Torture a pire to the totality of pain. Antonin Artaud once described the way
in which a pain "as it inten ifie and deepen , multiplies its re ources and means
of acce at every level of the ensibility . " 67 So the torturers , like pain itself,
continually multiply their re ources and means of acce until the room and
everything in it become a giant externalized map of the pri oner' feeling .
Almo t a ob es ively narrow and repetitive a the pain on which it model
it elf, torture can be more ea ily een bec~u e it ha dimen ion and depth, a
space that can be walked around in though not walked out of. Here there i
56
UNMAKING
nothing audible or v1 ible, there 1 nothing that can be touched, or ta ted, or
smelled that 1 not the palpable mamfe tation of the pn oner' pam.
-The eighth and, for now, final element came u back to where we were
immediately before tarting th1 enumeration of obje t1fied element of patn,
namely, that one of 1t mo t fnghtenmg aspect 1 1t re 1 lance lo object1ficat1on.
Though indisputably real to the ufferer, 1t 1 , unle accompanied by vi ible
body damage or a d1 ease label, unreal to other . Thi profound ont logical pht
1 a doublmg of pam' annihilating power: the la k of a kn wledgment and
recognition (which if pre enl could act a a fonn of elf-exten. ion) become a
1al e uivalent of the physical
e ond fonn of negation and rejection , the
aversivene Thi temfymg dichotomy and doubling i ti elf redoubled, multiplied , and magnified in torture becau e m tead of the per on' pam betng
ubject 1vely real but unobje tified and mv1s1ble l all other • 1t i n w hugely
objectified , everywhere v1S1ble, a. mconte tably pre ent in the external a in the
internal world, and yet 1t 1 1multaneou ly categorically denied .
Thi denial , the third major tep m the equence on which torture is built,
occur in the tran lation of all the objectified elements of pam mt the insignia
of power, the conversion of the enlarged map of human suffenng mto an emblem
of the regime ' trength . Thi tran talion 1~ made po 1ble by , and occur acros ,
the phenomenon common to both power and pam. agency The electnc generator,
the whip and cane , the torturer' fi ts , the wall , the d r , the pn oner'
exuality, the torturer' que lion , the in t1tut1on of med1 me, the pri oner'
cream , ht wife and children, the telephone , the chair, a trial , a ubmarine,
the pri oner' ear drums--all these and many more, everythmg human and
inhuman that is either phy ically or verbally, actually or allu ively pre ent, ha
become part of the glutted realm of weaponry , weaponry that can refer equally
to pain or power. What by the one 1 expenenced a a continual contraction 1
for the other a continual expan ion, for the torturer' growmg en e of elf i
earned outward on the pn oner' welling pain. A an actual phy teal fact, a
weapon i an object that goe into the body and produce pam A. a per eptual
fact , it lift the pain out of the body and make ll v1 ible or, more preci ely, it
acts as a bndge or mechani m aero which ome of pam ' allributes--its inconte table reality , it totality , 1t ability to eclip e all el e, 1t p wer of dramatic
alteration and world di olution-can be lifted away from their ource, can be
eparated from the ufferer and referred to power, broken off from the body and
attached in tead to the regime. Now. at lea l for the duration of tht ob cene
and pathetic drama , it i not the pain but the regime that 1 incontestably real,
not the pain but the regime that i total. not the pain but the regime that 1 able
to eclip e all el e, not the pain but the regime that is able to dis olve the world.
Fraudulent and merc1le , thi kind of power laim pam • attribute as its
The Structure of Torture
57
own and di claim the pam it elf. The act of di cla1mmg is as e ential to the
power as-lis the act of claiming. It of cour e as ists the torturer in practical ways.
He fir t inflicts pam, then objectifies pain, then denie the pain-and only this
final act of elf-blinding penn1ts the hift back to the first tep, the inflicting of
till more pain , for to allow the reality of the other' uffering to enter his own
con c1ou nes would immediately compel him to stop the torture. But the bond
between the blindne and the power goe far beyond the practical circles of
self-amplification. It i not merely that his power make him blind, nor that his
power i accompanied by b1indne s, nor even that his power requires blindness;
it i , m tead , quite simply that his blindne , hi willed amorality, is his power,
or a large part of it. Thi identification become almo t elf-evident when adi tic
forms of power are seen in relation to the benign and legitimate fonn of power
on which c1v11ization is based . Every act of civilization is an act of tran cending
the body in a way con onant with the body's need : in building a wall, to return
to an old friend, one overcome the body, project one elf out beyond the body '
boundar1e but in a way that expre e and fulfill the body's need for table
temperature . Higher moments of civilization, more elaborate forms of elfexten ion, occur at a greater di tance from the body: the telephone or the airplane
i a more emphatic in tance of overcoming the limitation of the human body
than i the cart . Yet even as here when most exhilaratingly defiant of the body,
civilization alway ha embedded within it a profound allegiance to the body,
for it i only by paying attention that it can free attention . Torture is a conden ation
of the act of "overcoming" the body pre enl m benign fonn of power. Although
the torturer dominate the pri oner both in phy ical act and verbal acts, ultimate
domination require that the pri oner' ground become increa ingly phy ical and
the torturer' increasingly verbal, that the prisoner become a colossal body with
no voice and the torturer a colo sat voice (a voice compo ed of two voice ) with
no body , that eventually the pn oner expenence him elf exclusively in tenn of
enuence and the torturer exclusively in tenn of self-exten ion . All tho e ways
in which the torturer dramatize hi oppo ition to and di tance from the pri oner
are way of dramatizing hi distance from the body. The mo l radical act of
d1 lancing reside in his di claiming of the other' hurt. Within the trategie of
power ba ed on denial there 1 , a in affinnative and civilized fonn of power,
a h1erar hy of achievement, ucce ive inten ification ba ed on increa ing di tance from, increa mgly great tran cendence of, the body: a regime' refu al to
recognize the nght of the nonnal and healthy i it cart; its refu al to recognize
and care for tho. e in agony i it airplane.
Thi di. play f the fi tion f power, the final product and outcome of torture ,
hould m the end be een in relation to it origin , the motive that i claimed to
be its tarting point , the need f r inf nnation . Torture i not unu ual in giving
o prominent a place to o fal e a motive, for, a noted earlier, other act of
political violence w1thm the e ame government uch as arre t and gratuitou
58
UNMAKING
puni hment are frequently accompanied by explanation of mot1v~ o arbitrary
that they eem intended a demon tration of contempt ~xploratton of other
hi toncal moment of brutality u h as Camu ' of the guillotine in France and
Arendt' of Hitler' Germany almo t inevitably comment on the obviou erroneou ne of the a erted motive. the purpo e of an execution cannot be deterrence 1f the execution 1 never even publicly announced; the war did not cau e
but permitted Hitler' mas execution .61! Thi fat e motive yndrome i not
adequately explained by the vocabulary of "excu e" and ·: rationalization,' '. and
1t continual recurrence ugge t that 1t has a fixed place in the formal logic of
brutality . The motive for torture 1 to a large extent the equivalent, though in a
different logical time , of the fictionahzed power; that 1 • one i the fa! ification
of the pain pnor to the pain and one the fa! 1ficat1on after the pain . The two
together form a clo ed loop of attention that en ure the exclu ion of the pri oner'
human claim. Ju t a the d1 play of the weapon (or agent or cau e) make it
po ible to lift the attribute of pain away from the pain , o the d1 play of motive
endow agency with agency, cau e with cau e, thereby lifting the attribute of
pain till further away from their ource. lf di . playing the weaponry begin to
convert the pn oner' pain into the torturer' power, d1 playing the motive (and
the ongoing interrogation mean that 1t 1 fairly continually d1 played) enable
the torturer' power to be under tood in term of ht own vulnerab1hty and need .
A motive i of course only one way of deflecting the natural reflex of ympathy
away from the actual ufferer. According to Arendt m Eichmann in Jerusalem,
the peeche of Himmler were full of phra es uch a , "The order to olve the
Jewish que uon, th1 wa the mo t fnghtenmg order an organization could ever
receive ," and he explain .
Hence the problem was h w to overcome not o much their con ien e a the animal
pity by which all normal men are affected in the presen e of phy 1cal suffenng
The trick u ed by Himmler-who apparently was rather trongly afflicted with these
m tincuve reacllon himself- was very 1mple and probably very effective, 1t con1 ted m turning the e m tmcts around, as 1t were , in directing them toward the
elf So that m tead of aying What homble thing I did to people! , the murderers
would be able to ay· What horrible thmg I had to watch m the pur uance of my
du11e , how heavily the task weighed upon my houlder ,..
Concentration camp guards, according to Bruno Bettelhetm, repeatedly aid to
their pri oner , "I'd hoot you with thi gun but you're not worth the three
pfennig of the bullet,'' a tatement that had o little effect on the pri oner that
1t con tant repetition wa unintelhg1ble to Bettelheim until he realized that it
had been made part of the SS trammg becau e of it impact on the guard
them elve .10
Thi last example, becau e it involve an actual weapon, i paradigmatic of
the tructure of perception that underlte the fa] e motive even when no overt
The Structure of Torture
59
image of the weapon i present. Every weapon has two end . In converting the
other per on' pain into h1 own power, the torturer experiences the entire occurrence exclu ively from the nonvulnerable end of the weapon . If his attention
begin to lip down the weapon toward the vulnerable end, if the evered attribute of pain begin to lip back to their origin in the prisoner' sentience, their
backward fall can be topped, they can be lifted out once more by the pre ence
of the motive. If the guard' awarene s begins to follow the path of the bullet,
that path itself can be bent o that he him elf rather than the prisoner is the
bullet ' destination: hi movement toward a recognition of the internal experience
of an exploding head and lo s of life i interrupted and redirected toward a
recognition of ht own lo of three pfennig . It doe not matter that there is
alway an extraordinary di junction between the two levels of need-between
being hot and losing three pfennig, between being the victim of the massive
concentration camp brutalit1e and having to watch tho e brutalities, between
extreme and prolonged phy ical pain of torture and being in need of a piece of
information--for the work of the false motive i formal, not substantive; it
prevent the mind from ever getting to the place where it would have to make
uch compari on . Power i cautiou . It cover itself. It base itself in another's
pain and prevents all recognition that there i "another" by looped circle that
en ure its own olip 1 m.
332
NOTES
35 "Tran npt of Torture!'\' Tnal,' 70. 76, 115
36 Pht/1pptnrs, 39
37 Leonard A agan and Albert Jon n, "Medical Ethic and Torture," in The New England
Journal of Med1ctnt' Vol 294, No 26 (1976), 1428 ee al o h1le An Amnesty International
Report (l.ond n A I Publi auons , 1974). 63
3
agan. 1428
39 Report on Allef(allons of Torture tn Brazil (London A I Publi at1on , 1972, 1976), 25, 65
40 I rael and the nan Arab Republtt, 20-27
41 "Rcpre ion en Uruguay. " u Mondt' . 20 June 1978
42 11u po 1b1lity h alway been pre nt Ac ording to Ja k Lind ay in Blastpower and
Balli tics Concept of For t' and Enerf(y in tht' Ancient World (New Y rk Harper & Row , 1974),
346. one an icnt wnter of a medical lreall on art1 ul lion warn that device developed to lltat
d1 locallon mak a temblc i rec avaJlablc to anyone who want to m1 use II, and the torture
in trumcnts of the Renill an e · were dire t 1m1tat1on of the Hippokrat1 apparatu "
43 o ommpre cnt 1 the willing r forced part1c1pat1on of d t rs that vanou intcmallonal
medical as 1at1on mccttng between 1975 and 1977 p sed re lull n urging doctors of all countne to avoid both active and p 1ve form of 1sung the torturers Although everything po 1blc
to chmmatc u h a 1Man e h uld certainly be d nc. the dccon tru lion of medicine in torture 1s
probably no more dependent on the part1c1patton of actual d tors than the inversion of the tnal 1
dependent on the presen e of JUdgc and lawyers
44 Home , 201
45 Letter fr m a ~ rmer Paraguayan pn oner, Amnc ty lntcmau nal Archives This man's
de cnptton 1 omewhat unu ual am ng former pn one rs' a count of t rture in its in lu ion of the
internal sensation he w cxpenencmg
46 . Brazil, 64, V1t'tnam, 28. " Tran npt of the Torturers ' Tnal ,' 53, Philippines, 23
47 Rt'port of an Amnt> ry lntunattonal Mission to Argt>nttna 6 15 Novt'mbu 1976 (London A.
Publicauon • 1977), 24, Ph1l1pp1ne , 29, " Tran cnpt of the Torturers ' Tnal,'' 9, 4
48 " Trans npt of the Torturers' Tnal ,'' 46, A I Hand ut on ruguay , Brazil, 64 The name
given throughout this paragraph arc the name of pcc1fic form of t rture Where there 1 a more
complete re ord of the t rturers ' language pattern , there 1 for tho who ervcd the Greek Junta,
11 1 clear that the torturers· incidental vocabulary 1 al o drawn from the c three realms the pri ner
rrught be held as th ugh in a game of football, h1 interrogato
companying each blow with hout
of "off 1de ,'' "goal,'' "foul ", the procc as a whole with u many ubordinate acts and wtth
the pnsoner gradually moving toward complete collap e was repeatedly referred to as "npemng";
pronouncements were made uch a "whoever enter AT mu t come out while a a bullerfly" (30,
11 , 45 , 97, 156, 241)
49 The u c of the terms "fraudulent ," "fat . " and "ficttt1ou " to descnbe the torturer' power
will be clanficd in the fourth
t1on of tht chapter and will be further clanfied in Chapter 2 which
compare the pla c of verbal fiction in torture and in war While the torturer' phy 1cal power over
the pn oner 1 as "real" as the pain 11 bnng about, what 1 not in the am
nse "real" 1 the
tran lat1on of the attnbutc of pain into the cultural in 1gma of a regime , a regime whose ab cnce
of leg111mate forms of authonty and ub tant1atton ha ~ occa 1oned the ficuonal dt play Thu a
dt unction 1 being made here between the ind1V1dual man t rtunng and ht role a representative
of a particular set of political and cultural constructs (h hould al o be lJ'c ed that while the
phy teal power of the torturer-as- ind1v1dual may be a curately 1dent1fied as ·'real,·· the cale of that
power cannot be inferred from the scale of the pnsoner' pain that 1s, 11 require neither trength
n r kill to mfl1ct hurt on a wholly deft'nSt'less human body; a weak child would be phy 1cally
capable of inf11cung 1m1lar hurt on human 11 sue had he the weapon or the 1mpul e to do o )
50 " Tran npt of the Torturers' Tnal,'' 48
51 " Trans npt of the Torturers' Tnal,'' 6, 62
52 Vit'tnam, pas 1m, pain, 9, Ph1l1pp1nes, 25, 28, Arl(t'nttna, 21: " Tran npt of the Torturers'
Tnal ," 68
53 W K Living ton , Pam Mt'chanrsms ( cw Y rk . Ma millan , 1943), 2
Notes
333
54 The First Circle, 640
55 Workshop on Human Rights, 5.
56 "Transcnpt of the Torturers' Tnal," 34
57 Argentina, 38, Ph1l1pp1nes, 45, 49, 50; "Transcnpt of the Torturers' Tnal," 65; Unpubh hed
medical report of former Greek pnsoncr; Unpubli hed medical report from former Chilean pnsoner
58 " Tramcript of the Torturers' Tnal," 54, 70, 77, Unpublished medical report of a former Chilean
pri oner; Workshop on Human Rights, 4 (descnbmg Portugal) Former pnsoners from country after
country dcscnbe being made to watch or hear another person being hurt. In tances of thi arc descnbed
by Reza Barahcm m "Terror in Iran," Tht' Nt'W YorlcReviewofBooks, 28 October 1976, 24
59 The lltle of the Amne ty lntemauonal new paper Matchbox 1 derived from this mcident.
60. Letter of a former Uruguayan pnsoner, Amnesty lntcmauonal Archive
61. Sheila Ca tdy, " The Ordeal of Shella C s1dy," The ObSt'rver [London), 26 Augu t 1977
62. For example, Ronald Melzack, a lcadmg thcorettcian on the phy 1ology of pam , writes, "If
inJury or any other nox1ou input fatl to evoke negauvc affect and aversive dnve (as in the case
de cnbed earlier of the football player, the soldier at the battlefront, or Pavlov's dogs) the expencnce
cannot be called pain" (The Puzzle of Pam) [New York. Baste Books, 1973), 47) Sec also J s
Brown ' "A Behavioural Analy 1 of Masochi m" m Punishment, eds . Richard H Walters, J Allen
Cheyne, R K Bank (Harmondsworth Penguin. 1972), 230-239, esp. 231 Jn David Bakan'
bnlliant little book, Disease , Pam and Sacrifice Toward a Psychology of Suffuing (Chicago;
Umversity of Chicago, 1968), 77, 79, he notes that p31n' avers1vene in some situations has a
beneficent effect incc 11 ts the only thmg that can make tolerable the otherwise intolerable scparalton
of a human being from ht hmb and, pos ibly, a woman from her baby
63 The Chronicle [W111tmant1c, Conn). UPI. 10 Feb 1977, 7, UPI. 21 June 1976, 10. The
article themselves had none of the crudny of thcrr lltle
64 Melzack , 19 , 20, 72
65 . Melzack, 93, sec al o 76
66 S W M1tchcll, ln1unt's of Nerves and Their Consequenus (Ph1ladcph1a Lippincott, 1872),
196
67 Antonin Artaud, Tht' Theatre and Its Doublt' , tran Mary Caroline Richards (New York.
Grove, 1958), 23
68. Albert Camu , " Reflect1ons on the Guillotine," in Resistance, Rebelllon. and Death. trans.
Justin O'Bnen (1960, rpt New York: Random-Vmtage, 1974), 180, and Hannah Arendt, Tota/1tananrsm (New York Harcourt-Harvest, 1951) , 45, 108 , 120
69 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann tn Juusalem . A Report on tht' Banaluy of Evil, 2nd ed. (1965;
rpt Harmondsworth Pengum, 1977) , 106
70. Bcttelhetm, 241
Notes to Chapter 2:
The Structure of War
The use of the adverb " ymbolically" here and later does n t mean that a ubslllute for the
human body h been made, nor a ub~lttute for real pam Rather, 11 refers to the fact that one
person tands for many Herc Nel on Goodman· use of the word " ample" for one kind of "symbol"
may be helpful (Ways of Worldmalcmg [Indiana: Ha kett, 1978]. 63-70)
2. For example, Article 5 of the Umted Nauon Umversal Declaration of Human Rights tales
unequivocally, "No one hall be ubJected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degradmg treatment
or pum hment. " Ag am. the International Covenants on Civil and Poliucal Rights arc unequivocal:
though omc "nght " may be u pend d dunng a tate emcrgen y, no uch qualification extends
to torture The unequivocal proh1b1uon 1 agaJn man1fe t in the fa t that 11 ha , as a re ult of the
court dccts1on in Filar11ga v Pt'no-lrala, 630 F 2d 876 (1980). come to be con idered a cnmc
warranung e tratcmtonal JUn d1ct1on. the cnme of torture can be toed in the United States even tf
the act of torture dtd not occur within U S boundancs. and neither the v1cllm nor the torturer 1 a