Why ‘Torture and Torturous Violence’?

Abstract

Torture is simultaneously a silenced entity and an overused term – something we often shy away from in serious discussion, but a word we might use flippantly. It is not uncommon to use the term ‘torture’ to describe mild displeasures: sitting through a poorly written play, listening to a song we don’t like, spending time with an odious relative. Meanwhile, debates about what torture actually is continue across the social and political sciences, law courts and military tribunals. In the aftermath of 9/11 in particular, whether violations should be deemed torture or cruel and inhuman treatment or indeed – as the Bush administration rolled out as a means to ‘interrogate’ potential terrorists – Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, continue. Meanwhile, violations which may amount to torture continue globally – daily and routinely. This book stems from a long-term grappling with this concept: torture. Since the mid-2000s I have worked with and researched various forms of violence – some over long periods of time, others (such as childhood abuse) over shorter periods. Research and activism have focused on sexualized violence, trafficking, domestic abuse, conflict-related rape, and torture with women seeking asylum in Northern Europe. There have been many times that I have spoken with women who have survived various and often multiple abuses, never to refer to them as torture. And yet the forms of violence they are subject to, as this book will highlight, are no less impactful in their inflictions of harm than that which we might recognize as torture.