First published in Italian as Tortura © Bollati Boringhieri editore, Turin, 2016

This English edition © Polity Press, 2018

‘Torture’, from Miracle Fair by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Joanna Trzeciak. Copyright © 2001 by Joanna Trzeciak. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (Copyright © George Orwell, 1949). Reprinted by permission of Bill Hamilton as the Literary Executor of the Estate of the Late Sonia Brownell Orwell.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2436-5

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2437-2 (pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Di Cesare, Donatella, author.

Title: Torture / Donatella Di Cesare.

Other titles: Tortura. English

Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018011377 (print) | LCCN 2018022722 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509524402 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509524365 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509524372 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Torture.

Classification: LCC HV8593 (ebook) | LCC HV8593 .D5313 2018 (print) | DDC 364.6/75–dc23

LC record available at https://Iccn.Ioc.gov/2018011377

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There is something problematic, or at least rather delicate, about the decision to write about torture. Up until just a few years ago, it seemed that it was universally condemned, or at least that it was formally condemned. But that was not enough to stop torture from getting around this prohibition, evading a ban which is so widespread that it has almost risen to the level of a categorical principle. Clandestine, torture seeks refuge behind the scenes.

But this universal stance has weakened. The new adepts of torture are coming into the open practically everywhere. In the United States, they have begun debating it. Shouldn't exceptions be made? Perhaps the considered, limited or even legalized use of torture could again be of service today? It would seem that the ‘war on terror’ demands as much.

Increasingly, widespread efforts are being made to legitimize a practice that has, in fact, never gone away. Its inveterate champions – the dictators and autocrats, the despots and demagogues who have remained in power across all four corners of the globe – welcome the unexpected breach in democratic ranks, rejoicing at the unexpected opening. Public opinion is swaying, uncertain. It seems that an instinctive rejection of torture is no longer enough.

The prohibition of torture is accused of an empty utopianism, unable to respond appropriately to a global situation dominated by the terrorist threat. This argument holds that we have to protect democracy, and authorizing torture is the way to do it. Only by drawing on terror can we combat terror. For this reason, the question of torture is the watershed that divides two alternative readings of present-day history.

If in this work I am willing to discuss the role and status of torture, the suppositions it rests on and the outcomes it produces, that does not mean that I am prepared to accept some ‘good argument’ coming along to justify it. A firm ‘no’ to torture must come before any other discussion can be had. Wherever we start to invoke ‘special cases’, and wherever a moral philosopher begins a hoary list of exceptions and restrictions, the only appropriate response can be a categorical, concise objection that comes from political practice: ‘Do not torture.’

Yet a ‘no’ driven above all by indignation is not enough to defend the human dignity that torture does so much to wound. This is a theme where we cannot proceed without reflection. In this sense, torture is a paradigm of the moral question in the contemporary age. Theodor W. Adorno cogently summed up the paradox of this problem: ‘No man should be tortured; there should be no concentration camps ‒ while all of this continues in Asia and Africa and is repressed merely because, as ever, the humanity of civilization is inhumane toward the people it shamelessly brands as uncivilized’ (2004: 285). So, first, there is an impulse to proclaim a decisive and defiant ‘no’ whenever we find out that someone has been tortured. This is a sense of solidarity with tormented bodies, and it expresses the raw, physical fear of those who identify with the victim. At the same time, there is an attempt to reflect on torture in theoretical terms, indeed in a way that does not just stop at rationalizing this impulse and translating it into abstract principles.

Here, there emerges a contradiction that cuts across the present scenario and which sheds at least some light on the effective impotence that each of us feels today. This is the contradiction between our spontaneous resistance to still having to confront such an intolerable horror and our intellectual understanding of why this horror persists, despite everything, with no end in sight. Torture itself sheds light on the dilemma of the individual who thrashes around, trapped in this vice.

Confronted with such a dramatic scenario, we frankly have to recognize that ‘nothing has changed’. This is, indeed, what the refrain of Wisława Szymborska's poem ‘Torture’ tells us. This work is itself almost a short philosophical treatise. Even as it offers sharp insight, it also displays an incredulous bewilderment, an exasperated dismay (2002: 46‒7). Perhaps, faced with repeated horrors, the dogged ‘no’ of objection will prove powerless. But it should be remembered that we are not just what we do, but also what we promise to do, or not to do.