In The Ways of Judgment, Oliver O'Donovan is happy to accept a certain cultural relativism when it comes to the practices of punishment. It is possible to stand against capital punishment, for example, without regarding it as a universally forbidden practice.
But then he asks:
May it not be that even torture is accommordated within the symbolism of some penal languages? And if we define torture purely anatomically, as performing certain painful acts upon the human body, perhaps it may be so; and perhaps it may be lack of imagination that makes it seem incompatible with respect for human dignity - we need only think of the measures used by admirers of the Japanese samurai culture to commit suicide! As things stand, however, the practices we condemn as torture are clearly not viewed in that light by the societies which practice them. They are performed in secret, without due process, without legal specifications as to duration or intensity; and they in no way seek to tell the truth about the crimes they punish. These features identify such practices as subversive of the norms by which those societies formally operate. Understood in this sense, as the infliction of 'cruel and unusual' suffering outside prevailing norms, torture may be regarded as universally prohibited. (p. 122)
The very secrecy of the practice of torture gives the lie: those who practice it know already that it is wrong! But O'Donovan hones in on a problem for those descriptions of torture which rather simplistically say that it is a matter of inflicting pain on the body pure and simple. In a strange way, torture has its own language.
13 comments:
Whilst wanting to distance myself from advocating torture, I wonder if the practice is as secret as stated.
I'm led to believe (and happy to be proved wrong) that in various societies a little bit of slapping around, sleep deprivation, bruises, and intimidation is fully expected by Police, and certainly not a secret practice.
I suppose it comes down to definitions of torture. A notoriously difficult thing to define.
Mike
--They are performed in secret, without due process, without legal specifications as to duration or intensity; and they in no way seek to tell the truth about the crimes they punish.--
What, then, of administrative torture ordered for purported* discovery purposes?
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*NB: I don't grant that premise.
Mike I think the 'secrecy' aspect has only got to do with 'hiddeness' but more importantly public control and accountability.
Thanks, Michael.
@Mike - there may well be cultural variations about where exactly cruel and unusual punishment begins?
Well - while granting that practices and customs and conventions vary, I wouldn't want to grant cultures (whether different in time or place) a kind of morally sealed compartment, by which it becomes impossible to judge one culture's practices over and against another.
Flogging in Botany Bay for example (or in the Old Testament for that matter): it is not a simple matter of saying 'that was an abhorrent practice', though we might never countenance such a practice being introduced in own times.
@Michael & Mikey (and let me just state - there are way too many Michael's commenting on this post - I wonder if there is something inherent in the title "Michael" that draws us to torture?)
The cultural variation/relatively is the key point isn't it. With Michael, I don't want to grant cultures supreme moral independence.
However, when it comes to torture - it is very hard not to view it through our western lenses. Can we define absolute cross-cultural moral boundaries? I want to. I'm just not quite sure how to.
O'Donovan is, as always, helpful.
Mike
Apologies if you have mentioned this elsewhere, Michael, but the key theological text on torture, I think, is William Cavanaugh's book Torture and Eucharist. He makes very much the same point as O'Donovan (among other profound thoughts) - that to see torture as simply inflicting physical pain, without understanding its social consequences (primarily, alienating and isolating people from each other) is to miss the theological meaning of torture. The aspect of secrecy is certainly significant here - where secrecy means not that no-one knows it happens (as in the example above, of cultures where everyone knows that torture is committed regularly by state-sanctioned agents) - but that it happens behind closed doors and not as part of a recognised and monitored judicial process. Cavanaugh would argue, I think, that such secrecy is what produces the humiliation and atomisation that is central to torture's results.
I find Cavanaugh really convincing, but I'm also interested in how his argument relates to the state-sanctioned public infliction of pain, which is part of our own society's history - you mentioned flogging at Botany Bay, but public executions or mutilations (branding etc.) were standard in England until the 19th century. Those reformers who argued against public corporal and capital punishment (including evangelicals) were often not opposed to such punishments per se, but they argued that the public infliction of pain by the state was bad for society - it produced a lack of empathy and an unhealthy attraction to the suffering of others. So for those reformers secrecy of some kind for such punishments was actually healthier for society.
Is torture simply the performance of violent acts against a body?
I’m uneasy with conflating torture with punishment.
Torture is often committed in the absence of wrongdoing. That is, torture is often inflicted to elicit information (e.g. like that committed against the character Anwar El-Ibrahimi in the film Rendition) or to create a culture of fear (e.g. death squads). I’m not convinced this kind of torture is always done in secret either. For example, where does an act of violence like lynching come into the equation?
I’m conscious of the fact that I have a limited Western under standing of ‘wrongdoing’ or ‘lawbreaking’ but I feel like I want to dig deeper into (and would like to hear your thoughts on!) the distinction between punishment, discipline and torture.
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