Torture and the Future

Perspectives from the Humanities

______________________________________________________________________________

Main Page | Project Description | Events/Lectures | Coordinators | Links | Giving | Contact

CONFERENCE ON "TORTURE AND THE FUTURE"

Friday, May 18 / UCSB MultiCultural Center

Free and open to the public

Barbara Harlow: "Tortured Thoughts: The Example Set by Ruth First from her Interrogation in 1963 to her Assassination in 1982"

When Ruth First’s killers applied for amnesty to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a significant aspect of the Commission’s deliberations concerned whether or not she was a “legitimate target,” whether, that is, her assassins had acted out of “political motivation.” In other words, as the testimony suggests, First’s academic position at the time as research director at the recently founded Center for African Studies at newly independent Mozambique’s Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, should have been decisive in determining that she was not a “legitimate target.” The TRC, however, decided otherwise, and her killers were granted amnesty. Academic affiliations may not be an excuse after all. But then, who is to say?

This paper proposes to discuss Ruth First’s career – from her detention and interrogation in 1963 in South Africa* to her assassination in 1982 – with special emphasis on her academic appointments in Dar es Salaam in 1975 and in Maputo from 1979 to 1982. When to talk and when not to talk. What effect did the constant threat of torture during her detention have on her later public practices as a committed historian and investigative reporter as she continued her career through the two decades that distanced her interrogation and her assassination? And what example does that trajectory of “tortured thoughts” set for another era’s academic coming of age?

* Ruth First. 117 Days. Penguin, 1965.

Barbara Harlow is Visiting Professor and Acting Chair of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo (2007-7) and the Louann and Larry Temple Centennial Professor of English Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Resistance Literature (1987), Barred: Women, Writing, and Political Detention (1992), and After Lives: Legacies of Revolutionary Writing (1996), and co-editor with Mia Carter of Archives of Empire (2003).

Colin Dayan: "Due Process and Lethal Confinement"
How has the "allowable injury" paradigm (the legal limit of deprivation or harm) been extended to Guantanamo and other sites of incarceration in the global war on terror? The codification of inmates in local prison practice, once adapted to the demands of national security, extends dehumanizing strategies of classification to ever larger groups of persons. I argue that the erosion of due process in our courts set the stage for a "new world order," where rituals of certification, labelling, or naming not only threaten the weak, the socially oppressed, and the racially suspect, but sanction a new, deterritorialized space of
incapacitation.

Colin Dayan is Robert Penn Warren Professor of the Humanities. Her recent books include Haiti, History, and the Gods (1995, 1998) and The Story of Cruel and Unusual (2007), just out from MIT Press. She is currently completing Held in the Body of the State, forthcoming Princeton University Press.

Darius Rejali: "Torture, Democracy and Our Future"
First, I will speak about torture and its various families of techniques what might be called “styles of torture.” Then I’ll discuss these styles in relation to democracy, and lastly, I’ll turn to torture talk, what one might call the “Great American Torture Debate.” Throughout, I will be gesturing towards past trends and implications for our future prospects. All my observations will be drawn from my forthcoming work, Torture and Democracy (Princeton, November 1997). This work takes the reader from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities, from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the new democracies of Latin America and Europe. As I trace these histories, I reach surprising and troubling conclusions about the relationship of torture to democracy, relationships that existed long before the CIA even existed. I make this case on the basis of unprecedented research, conducted in multiple languages and on several continents, and begun years before most of us had ever heard of Osama bin Laden or Abu Ghraib. I also tackle the controversial question of whether torture really works point for point with the new apologists of torture, including an original and disturbing reconsideration of whether torture really worked in the Battle of Algiers as the famous movie of the same name suggests.

Darius Rejali is a professor of political science at Reed College. He is a 2003 Carnegie Scholar and the author of Torture and Democracy (Princeton), Torture and Modernity (Westview) and the forthcoming Approaches to Violence (Princeton). He is a nationally recognized expert on government torture and interrogation. Iranian-born, Rejali has spent his scholarly career reflecting on violence, and, specifically, reflecting on the causes, consequences, and meaning of modern torture in our world. His work spans concerns in political science, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, and critical social theory. His work has appeared regularly in the mainstream media, including interviews and appearances on ABC News, CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Court TV, and Channel 5 (UK) and articles in Time (for example, see "Viewpoint: The Real Shame of Abu Ghraib") , Salon.com, Slate.com, and the Huffington Post. For more about Darius Rejali, see http://academic.reed.edu/poli_sci/faculty/rejali/rejali/academic.html

Lisa Hajjar: "Lawyering for Humanity"
"Lawyering for Humanity" is an exploration of the ways in which lawyers have responded to the Bush administration's licensing of torture and abuse of prisoners overseas. In 2002, a few lawyers began focusing on the so-called "worst of the worst" at Guantanamo, but since 2004 hundreds of lawyers--civilian and military--have become involved in the "war on terror" by litigating and other professional activities in attempt to restore the rule of law and preserve the notion that the role of government is to defend, not degrade, humanity.

Lisa Hajjar is the chair of the Law and Society Program at the University of California Santa Barbara. In 2003, she received the Harold J. Plous award, given annually to one of UCSB's top assistant professors. Her book, Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza, was published in 2005 by the University of California Press. She has published in "The Nation", in Amnesty International's periodical "Amnesty Now", and in many other journals and collections. She also serves on the editorial committee of "Middle East Report". Currently, she is working on a book about American torture and the role of lawyers.

George Hunsinger: "Torture Is the Ticking Time-Bomb: Why the Necessity Defense Fails"
Ever since the tragic events of September 11, the resort to torture by U.S. interrogators has not only seen a resurgence, but has also gained widespread public acceptance. Torture has been justified on the grounds that it is both effective and necessary. Using criteria from the just war tradition and international law, the paper argues that this line of justification will not bear scrutiny. A case is made that the prohibition against torture admits no exceptions.

George Hunsinger is the Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. In Janary 2006 he founded the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. He has a long history of anti-war and human rights activism. George Hunsinger is an ordained Presbyterian minister and president of the Karl Barth Society of North America. Since 2003, he has been active in the Faith and Order movement and recently completed a book on the Eucharist, "Let Us Keep the Feast: An Ecumenical Proposal", to be published by Cambridge University Press in the fall of 2007.

The keynote address by George Hunsinger is co-sponsorsored by the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life.

For an article on the event, please see http://www.independent.com/news/2007/may/17/anti-torture-leader-speaks-santa-barbara/