Friday, December 9, 2022 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM (ET)
O'Brian Hall - Cellino & Barnes Conf Room 509North Campus
The Baldy Center716-645-2102baldycenter@buffalo.edu
Nick Cheesman: A Political Concept of Torture
What is torture? My answer to the question, as it currently stands, is that in torture torment addressing an outward purpose is delivered pedagogically on a person dominated totally in the name of public authority. In this paper, I concentrate on three traits that inhere to this concept, and that give it political qualities: its pedagogy of torment; its outwardly expressed purposes; and, how torturers totally dominate captives by group work. I juxtapose them with traits found in other concepts of torture that have informed my own thinking, namely, torture’s epistemology of pain; its apparent purposefulness; and, the absolute powerlessness of the person tortured. I conclude by considering the question of whether tortured people are dehumanized or merely rendered human through the degradation of torture, shifting attention from the traits of the concept to look toward its limits.
Nick Cheesman is associate professor, Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University, and Senior Fellow, The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, University at Buffalo (Fall 2022). His research is on torture in Thailand and Myanmar. Cheesman's 2022 publications include “Torture in Thailand at the limits of law” (Law and Social Inquiry), and “Law and order” (Annual Review of Law and Social Science).
The hybrid event is held in-person and accessible online via Zoom.