Bodily mutilation operates as state-endorsed silencing that strips civic identity

Evidence

Mutilation – the uncivil extreme of violating the body through physical acts – is a form of doing the unrepresentable, that which cannot in some sense be spoken adequately, the changing (mutating) of the body in some basic or radical way. But as also a muting, a silencing, it is, in the extreme, making the identified or identifiable anonymous, lacking identification. Mutilation or bodily violations accordingly are a form of forced silencing, a more or less direct cutting out of tongues. As such, it is anathema to civility, the death of free expression. Mutilation, in short, is the undoing of civility, its counter-condition. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 239

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines mutilation in the author’s argument as the counter-condition of civility, an erasure of address and naming.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of speech-silencing mechanisms across identity axes and to Abu Ghraib literature. — connects to: Mutilation forces silence and strips the victim of identity — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 239; Political civility depends on being named while mutilation reduces persons to unnamed numbers — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 240

Broader Connections

• Mutilation forces silence and strips the victim of identity #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 239
• Political civility depends on being named while mutilation reduces persons to unnamed numbers #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 240