Abstract
Torture has reappeared in liberal democracies in the guise of anti-terrorism strategies. The acceptance of its use and the fascination with the images and documents that indicate the pain and suffering of the tortured point to more than a belief in the need for torture to counter terrorist threats. This fascination implies an enjoyment on the part of the liberal subject who is looking on while the other subject is being beaten. In this article I consider the liberal subject’s acceptance of and fascination with the scene of torture. I argue that the scene of torture, as imagined by the subject looking on, provides a formula for the relief of anxiety in the liberal subject who does not know if s/he will be subject to torture at any time. To consider this scene I analyze Donald Rumsfeld’s annotation to the ‘Action Memo’ which sanctioned torture and, through the work of Freud, Lacan and Santner, I explore the position of contemporary sovereigns in their function as providing transcendental signification for the subject seeking recognition and relief in the sovereign’s gaze.
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Notes
On 11 Jan 2008, The Guardian Weekly reported in ‘US Officer Cleared Over Abu Ghraib’ that ‘The only officer who faced a court-martial over the torture at Abu Ghraib has been cleared of all criminal wrongdoing. The BBC reports that Lt. Col. Steven Jordan was convicted in August of disobeying a gag order, but that decision was annulled and his record is now clean. No officer has been dismissed or faced any direct charges for the Abu Ghraib scandal, although 11 lower-ranking soldiers have been convicted.’
The dynamic of recognition as meconnaissance is most obviously explained in Lacan’s essay on the ‘mirror stage’, (2006). Seminar delivered 17 July 1949. Recognition is further illustrated as the dynamic in which the Other is ‘the beyond in which the recognition of desire is tied to the desire for recognition’ (p. 436).
In psychoanalysis foreclosure is the condition of the psychotic and while I am not suggesting that all subjects who perform in this way are psychotic I believe that a psychotic contortion emerges under the extreme anxiety which accompanies the presence of torture in one’s social and political landscape. This is more in line with the notion of the ‘paranoid/schizoid’ position elaborated by Melanie Klein than the Lacanian notion of psychosis as a structure (Klein 1986; Lacan 1993). For a thoughtful discussion of the paranoid/schizoid position in relation to anxieties after terrorist attacks see Cash (2009).
As I will have remarked below, Rousseau’s comments ‘The sovereign might say: “What I want is precisely what this man wants”…but no sovereign could say: “What this man is going to want tomorrow I too shall want”’, Rousseau (1968 Query, pp. 69–70).
At a discussion of Eric Santner’s paper ‘The People’s Two Bodies’ on 21 April 2010, he used the phrase the ‘surplus of immanence’. It does not however appear in his paper. My thanks to Eric Santner for allowing me to read the unpublished version of this work.
For further discussion of the sovereign-father overlay see Rogers (2007).
Rumsfeld on detainees at Guantanamo Bay. See Seelye (2002).
For Freud the status of the father is ambiguous and can be transferred, as he says ‘the person beating is never the father, but is left undetermined just as in the first phase, or turns in a characteristic way into a representative of the father such as a teacher’ (1919, pp. 185–186).
For further discussion of the function of temporality in relation to sovereignty see Rogers and Rush this issue.
I am thinking of Saddam Hussein, and it is likely this would not be far from Rumsfeld’s mind either in this context. For a discussion of the issue of recognition in relation to the trial of Saddam Hussein see Rogers and Rush (2009).
This is of course exactly what it means to say ‘truth is subjective’. The truth of the regime is a product of pure subjection.
‘Surplus of immanence’ is Santner’s terminology, however I am utilizing Costas Douzinas’ (2000) discussion of ‘rights as desire’ to better frame the anxiety which emerges through a lack of limit on the immanence of the subject.
References
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Legislation, Memos
Military Commissions Act of 2006 10 USC (2006).
US General Counsel of the Department of Defense. 2002. Action Memo: Counter Resistance Techniques. 27 Nov 2002. Annotation by Rumsfeld 2 Dec 2002. [Herein referred to as ‘Action Memo’]. http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/Rumsfeld_memos_ANG_.pdf. Accessed 13 June 2010.
US Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel. 2002. Memorandum for John Rizzo, Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency. 1 Aug 2002. [Herein referred to as ‘Bybee Memo’]. http://dspace.wrlc.org/doc/bitstream/2041/70967/00355_020801_004display.pdf. Accessed 13 June 2010.
Media
Associated Press. 2007. Bush says U.S. ‘does not torture people’: President responds to report that 2005 memo relaxed interrogation rules. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21148801/. Accessed 13 June 2010.
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Clemens, Justin. 8 Nov 2008. Radio interview. Australian Broadcasting Commission.
The Guardian Weekly. 2008. US Officer Cleared Over Abu Ghraib. 11 Jan 2008.
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Seelye, Katharine. 23 October 2002. Some Guantánamo prisoners will be freed, Rumsfeld says. New York Times. New York.
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Rogers, J. Torture: A Modicum of Recognition. Law Critique 21, 233–245 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-010-9075-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-010-9075-9