THE ROLE OF TORTURE IN THE

NEOLIBERAL PUNITIVE REGIME

Ignacio Mendiola

Sociology DepartmentUniversity of the Basque Country

1.- Introduction

Analyze the relationship between torture and power (vs. extraordinary)

Structure of visibility (vs. opacity of (some) punitive practices)

The social production of torture (vs. the role of torturer)

2.- Modernity and violence

2.1.- Relationships of power and violence (Foucault)

Direct, structural, symbolic and everyday violences (Bourgois)

2.2.- Biopolitical ontology of habitability

Habit, habitat and inhabitant

Violences on body (torture)

Violences on space (political ecology)

Violences on movement (regimes of mobility)

2.- Modernity and violence

2.3.- Capture of spaces:

(neo)liberal, neo(coloniality), security

2.4.- Capture of bodies:

Production

Sexuality

Sovereign power, discipline and control

The violence of the capture:

Produce other habitsProduce human waste

3.- The practice of torture: inhabitant without habits and habitats

The most radical negation of life in life: to inhabit the uninhabitable

3.1.- Torture and body:

Animalization of life (Bios – Zoe)Pleasure and suffering (Nietzsche)

3.2.- Torture and language:

Ticking bomb scenario (pedagogy of torture)Silence, cry, guilt

4.- The punitive-political practice of torture

4.1.- Torturability: from Greek slave to criminal law of the enemy (Jakobs)

4.2.- Law and torture: ambiguity and lack of relevance (role of committees)

United Nations Convention against Torture (1984)

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is

suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any

kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public

official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or

incidental to lawful sanctions.

Article 1.1

4.- The punitive-political practice of torture

4.3.- Exceptionality as a political dispositive: spectral sovereignty (Butler)

Production of law under exceptionality-securityProduction of narratives about threat/fear

To make a decision about exceptionality (arbitrariness)To act in the scope of exceptionality (impunity)

Capture of subjectivities: Political dimension (security):

Otherness of threat: (suspect of) terrorist, political dissidence

Economic dimension (neoliberalism): Otherness of exclusion: prisoners, migrants, minors

5.- Geography of torture

5.1.- Civilization of war (dal Lago):

War on terror (secret detentions, extraordinary renditions, prisons…)

Domestic terrorism (isolation)

5.2.- (Post)disciplinary societies (Wacquant):

Prisions (habitability, long solitary confinement)

Immigrant Internment Centers

Detention centers / therapeutic Centers for minors