Torture continuing abroad exposes civilization’s inhumane core

Evidence

The memory of the old injury persists, though the physical pain and the immediate fear have been removed by civilization. Society constantly casts woman’s self-abandon back into the sacrificial situation from which it freed her. No man, cajoling some poor girl to go with him, can mistake, unless he be wholly insensitive, the faint moment of rightness in her resistance, the only prerogative left by patriarchal society to woman, who, once persuaded, after the brief triumph of refusal, must immediately pay the bill. She knows that, as the giver, she has from time immemorial also been the dupe. But if she begrudges herself, she is only duped the more. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 106 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In his important book, the Iranian political scientist Darius Rejali makes the interesting argument that, far from being a barbaric survival in the modern state as Scott’s story suggests, torture is in fact integral to it. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 499 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Rejali believes that his book refutes what Foucault had to say about torture in Discipline and Punish. He maintains that torture does not give place to discipline in modern society, as Foucault claimed, but persists in a . — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 502 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Torture persists alongside rather than giving way to modern discipline — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 502; Civilization recreates the sacrificial situation it claims to abolish — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 106; Torture is integral to modern disciplinary societies, not a barbaric survival — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 499 (+1 more)

Related

• Torture is integral to modern disciplinary societies, not a barbaric survival (similarity 0.87)
• Torture persists alongside rather than giving way to modern discipline (similarity 0.86)
• Torture occurring in a modern society does not prove it is integral to modernity (similarity 0.82)
• Iran’s torture practice is equally essential under both its modern regimes (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Civilization recreates the sacrificial situation it claims to abolish #corroborates (0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 106
• Torture persists alongside rather than giving way to modern discipline #corroborates (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 502
• Torture is integral to modern disciplinary societies, not a barbaric survival #corroborates (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 499
• Sexualized torture discourse reinforced Western modernity against Iraqi pre-modernity #expands (0.75)