Provocation: Torture as Rhetoric

Abstract

Proponents and opponents of torture have made use of diverse rhetorics to argue their respective cases before general public. Diverse texts focused on issue also reveal that, while War on Terror may have created upsurge in interest in topic, these debates are long-standing. Yet across this broad swath of discourse, a distinctive theme emerges, one that demands additional consideration by scholars of communication--torture itself as embodied rhetoric. I believe that analysis of rhetorical situation where juridical discourse transforms into corporeal reality through application of provides a unique opportunity for exploring disruption of standard notions of audience and rhetor, individuality and commonality, shedding light on how these dyads are reconfigured by contexts of forced identification and dissociation. TORTURE AND THE CONSUBSTANTIALITY OF THE TORTURER AND TORTURED Elaine Scarry describes torture as a powerful (and power-full) act with capacity to destroy a person's self-identity. It can even affect his or her ability to construct reality. Comparing agony of torture with other forms of ritualized pain, such as those associated with religious practices, Scarry determines that there is no expiatory effect that then permits the return of world itself' (1985, p. 34). This kind of can only destroy or erase, because it does not encourage a purification and renewal of perspective that nonetheless acknowledges individual's subjectivity; instead, torture destroys a person's perspectival frameworks to realign their subjectivity with that of another. Seemingly, those tortured have ability to ease their suffering through confession or surrender, but they have no real control over duration and intensity of experienced and expected agony. This control which other forms of ritualized can foster, Scarry suggests, allows individuals to maintain individual agency. But of torture denies that and, in rendering tortured person's body a weapon or threat against itself, torture realizes an almost obscene conflation of private and public (p. 53). It erases fundamental boundaries between a person and his or her tormenters that encourage self-preservation, and so proves a highly efficient rhetoric that aligns will of receiver with that of rhetor. Consubstantiality occurs when individuals come together for a purpose based on perceived commonality; rhetors create consubstantiality by persuading their audiences that their interests and those of many are joined (Burke 1969). Through identification of common sensations, concepts, images, ideas, attitudes, consubstantiality arises as sharing of substance through acting-together (p. 21). Identification also depends on appreciation of dissociation, which stresses division rather than unity. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca explain that identification invokes dissociation automatically--since the same form which unites various elements ... dissociates them from neutral background (2006, p. 190)--and vice versa, although one or other may be emphasized in argumentation. Notably, identification and dissociation are only possible when a sense of self as integral individual is upheld, when one's own ideals and beliefs can be compared to those of others. Torture deliberately disrupts these processes by mystifying basic divisions between rhetor and his or her audience. As victim incorporates aims of tormentor through physical coercion, torturer's power transforms into material reality even as individual remains actual cause of his [own] pain (Scarry, p. 47). By producing illusion that he or she has power to end pain, values of oppressor become embodied expression. And, victim's body becomes instrument of his or her own torment. This process highlights break of individual's body from private self, shattering holistic terministic screen through which reality is constructed and interpreted. …