torture guardin'

I recommend listening to the following while reading this article:
MP3: Meira Asher + Guy Harries, "Torture -- Bodyparts"

Ah, torture in the fall.

With all the recent talk about the United States Senate legally authorizing the use of torture for the continued execution of the War of Terror (oops, that’s a typo; there should be a colon after “War”) as well as the renewed public interest in the Maher Arar case, my thoughts have moved to a new place: are we at the end of history as we have known it so far? I do not mean to suggest that the human experience of life will stop or that the world will be uninhabitable or anything quite as apocalyptic as all of that. While all of the proceeding is true, if not likely, I am presently talking about a change in the zeitgeist and not the material conditions of human civilization. Instead, the course charting, over many centuries, the emergence of the modern individual from the bondage of despotism is itself altering in a rather dramatic fashion.

It appears as though a certain regression is emerging as the dominant philosophy of the modern subject. Insular, self-reflexive, and superstitious to the point of being totemismistic. Solutions to problems have become things that you buy, and so far the War on Terror has cost America around $400 billion, and some people are going so far as to suggest that the war in Iraq alone will cost the US economy over $2 trillion). On the point of totemism, I’ll leave the last word to the American government, which has again proven a certain arrogant disregard for the international community. On helping to pass the Detainee Interrogation Bill, which allows the White House to suspend what most people call human rights at its discretion, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo, said: "Some want to tie the hands of our terror fighters. They want to take away the tools we use to fight terror, to handcuff us, to hamper us in our fight to protect our families." Sometimes I too think that my family will only be safe when enough people have been waterboaded into making up yet another Arabic-sounding name.


waterboarding in Antwerrp, 1556

The public sphere has been relatively clean and gore-free since the end of the Second World War. Only occasionally and in isolation have events of significant violence occurred. In the decades that followed the 1940s, however, there was not a sense that violence pervaded the dominant culture in an open manner. McCarthyism, Vietnam, the October Crisis, and other forms of localized and violent division can be seen to be more akin to the residue rather than a reanimation of prior horrors. Many of the institutions that have kept the world relatively peaceful despite occasional lapses of barbarism, such as the United Nations and the concept of human rights, came about as a direct response to the horrors that much of the world experienced in the 1930s and 40s.

However, it seems as though this generation, which has not seen the full extent of human misery except though media reconstruction, is seeking a more intimate association with violence. This trend is occurring on two levels. The first is among those who understand that the true power of the modern subject is to realize existence as they imagine and then by means of technological access drastically alter their environment. Witness not only the rise in school shootings and other acts of urban guerilla violence, but also the tactics employed in terrorist deployment including the planes that were flown into the World Trade Center (9/11 is the remix album for the aviation industry). In each case, small groups of people using readily-available consumer technology and services caused a significant amount of political and social disruption.

The second level of the modern desire for violence is an issue of representation. Torture-as-entertainment is certainly not new, however the entertainment industry moved from gladiatorial fights to horror movies at about the same pace that society moved from despotism to democracy. However when you begin to analyze the manner in which violence is being represented in contemporary media, it becomes clear that the public’s bloodlust is rising. Computerized depictions of violence, usually in microscopic biological detail, in video games, films, and television are increasingly common. More screen-time is being given to close-ups of wounds, and many acts of violence are depicted in slow-motion so that the viewer can more casually receive all of the visual information.

Torture has become a common thematic device in cinema and television these days. Many horror movies are realistically depicting the violence of torture rather than the fantastic and supernatural gore that was previously quite popular. Torture has even entered into mainstream tastes through shows like Lost and 24. The war in Iraq has itself become a remix project, as YouTube documents many attempts to turn war footage into music videos and reality-style television.

Let’s get back to the American government for a second. First and foremost is the White House’s often-noted disregard for the international community, and with the United Nations in particular. Arguably, when America usurped the UN’s authority it demonstrated to every other nation that strength can legitimize any ideological position. We are still waiting for answers as to why Israel bombed the UN observation post in Lebanon.

In relation to the DI Bill, President Bush said: "The American people need to know we're working together to win the war on terror." With all due respect given to discretion, that’s the fucking scariest statement by a human that I have ever read. The American government is allowing violence to escalate because, deep within the conditioning of many of their officials, they truly believe that America is strongest when it is applying strength to others. The American people, consciously or not, want torture to become an authorized ritual meant to release insecurities about their national/personal security.



How do I know this? Rather than examine in detail the extent to which the DI Bill undermines the foundations for civil governance that most of the world’s nations have utilized since last hacking themselves to pieces, the media has taken upon itself to focus on the case of a Republican Congressman who sent dirty messages to pages. You are supposed to feel safe now that an aggressive, manipulative predator is out of power: Fox News is both ecstatic and confused (Foley is a Republican) now that he can no longer touch the body politic with his filthy pedophile hands. Thanks to the implications of the DI Bill however, the government will indeed be touching us all, and in ways that can at best be described as Guantanimaginable.


America is, apparently, a Christian nation

And it is here where history for the modern subject ends. As of September 27, 2006, the American government can officially attach electrodes to your genitals. Mark Foley did leave his mark on government after all. A new history will emerge as necessary – in this capacity, Gabriel Range’s “fictional documentary” Death of a President, which screened at this year’s TIFF, is a significant development – but that is beside the point. Historically speaking, it is during these interregnum periods that violence has proliferated and become accepted by an increasing percentage of the population as the principle means to ensure survival. Hopefully, the upcoming elections in America will allow a more rational government to reorder its international associations in a positive direction. Only with the major countries united under international law will chaos be avoided. Truly, it is not a precipitous drop from officially-sanctioned torture to even more absolute and widespread horrors.