Teaching and Learning about Torture

I teach a senior seminar in Political Theory at Drew University titled Torture: Pain, Body and Truth that  counts towards the Law, Justice and Society Minor at Drew and this happens to be the tenth time I am teaching the course. In these ten iterations, I have had the pleasure of teaching some of the best students at Drew from whom I have learnt a lot over the years. Occasionally, like most professors, I have organized events related to the class including panels with ACLU lawyers and Witness against Torture activists (alongside our own students); teach-in on Guantanamo as a part of a multi-university initiative; the Annual Law, Justice and Society lecture by Prof. Lisa Hajjar  and visit to exhibitions on torture. However, this time the students impressed and intrigued me in yet another manner- a constant reward of teaching. I ask them to bring in two visuals as a part of their presentations on concepts related to class and that has often been a way for me to both understand what they are thinking about as they engage with the readings but also to access some of the virtual world that students easily negotiate and initiate me into. This time, the first set of presenters picked political cartoons and that just set the trend for rest of the semester and it was really fascinating to see students relate concepts from our class to the analysis of political cartoons, and they generously agreed to collectively analyze a few political cartoons as a part of this blog. I could not think of a better way to end the semester-  this political cartoon essay reminds us of the ongoing debates on torture as Guantanamo remains open, efforts of accountability continue thanks to the amazing human rights lawyers and activists, and the nomination of the CIA director is mired in the torture policy of the Bush administration. Above all, it notes the continuation of torture and pain from ancient to modern times, across colonial and postcolonial contexts, in democratic and authoritarian regimes almost always coinciding with existing hierarchies in society.

​Jinee Lokaneeta, Drew University

A Deeper Look at the Chain of Command within Abu Ghraib
By: Shaylyn MacKinnon, Brooke Winters, Sage Johnson, and Aurie Flores
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This political cartoon deals with the photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison, leaked in 2004 by 60 Minutes. This cartoon deals with the issues of responsibility within the United States military and government, directly linking the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the Bush administration. This cartoon criticizes the lack of accountability among higher-ups, as the blame for these abuses was placed solely on individual military personnel such as Lynndie England, who is depicted in the pose of one of the more infamous Abu Ghraib photographs of her holding a leash around a tortured and naked Iraqi detainee.

In the interview with Angela Y. Davis, Davis asserts that “these abusive practices [at Abu Ghraib] cannot be dismissed as abnormalities,” echoing sentiments that reject the ‘few bad apples’ explanation put forward by the U.S. government in the early days of the Abu Ghraib scandal (49). Moreover, this cartoon ties in with Basuli Deb’s work regarding the tensions between liberal feminism and transnational feminism after the Abu Ghraib atrocities. Deb writes that “US-centric feminisms at once leapt to the rescue of these women [such as Lynndie England] and portrayed them merely as tools manipulated by the military establishment” (Deb, 1). Transnational feminism, on the other hand, looks at the dynamics between gender and race, taking note of how white women became ‘good citizens’ by helping in the torture of brown Iraqi detainees. This cartoon highlights the transnational feminist perspective by showing that while Lynndie England was working for the higher up government apparatus, she is also accountable for her part in the chain of command. England, though being a woman and a victim of the patriarchy, is white and therefore benefits from that patriarchy due to the power she holds over men of color.

Looking into the actual illustrative details of the cartoon, the themes mentioned (lack of accountability and where responsibility lies in the chain of command for torture) are represented most clearly in the directions each figure is facing. Lynndie England, the lowest in the “Chain of Command” and the one who was directly involved in the torture, faces the crumpled figure of the torture victim head on, thus acknowledging her actions in the practice of torture. On the contrary, Rumsfeld's head is only slightly angled toward England, giving the impression that he is neither acknowledging nor condemning the actions that led to the crumpled and chained figure. President Bush’s face is turned the furthest from the body, his eyes closed, whistling a tune to represent how he refuses to outwardly acknowledge the torture in any way. The positions of power are indicated by the size of each character, Bush by far the largest with each body shrinking in scale as the chain. While the size decreases, the detail of each figure increases the closer they get to the tortured victim, again suggesting a refusal to acknowledge the extent of the torture the further up the command chain one is. England is the most detailed because the public has become privy to the details of her involvement in the torture, whereas Bush and Rumsfeld’s connections are obscured to the public, leaving them “clean”. This cartoon is significant to the contemporary public because of its deconstruction of the ‘few bad apples’ explanation.

References

Angela Y. Davis. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture. Seven Stories
Press, 2005.

Basuli Deb. “Transnational Feminism and Women Who Torture: Re- imag(in)ing Abu Ghraib
Prison Photography.” Postcolonial Text 7. 1, 2012.

Drughon, Dennis. “Chain of Command.” Scranton Times, Scranton Times, 16 May 2004.
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“The Shadow”
​By: Brielle Castanheira, Alex Gilgorri, Dalton Valette, Boshudha Khan, Sebastian Godinez
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The three major themes that we identified are the bureaucracy of torture, denial of torture, and media as a form of torture. The US as a liberal democracy has conducted and denied its use of torture but evidence including the Rizzo memo counter those claims. Legal documentation similar to this show a systematic approach to the legalization of torture. The leak of the Abu Ghraib photos started a conversation about “enhanced interrogation”. This shows how media has become an evolved form of Foucault’s “spectacle of torture”, wherein privacy and autonomy are violated. In this cartoon, we see a deconstruction of liberal values, particularly seeing how the government itself endorsed these actions. The two things we noticed about the image were the shadow, figurative and literal, left by the torture conducted during the Bush presidency. The cartoon specifically states “the government”, alluding to the notion of blame on “a few bad apples” (e.g. Lynndie England). As identified by Jinee Lokaneeta in her first chapter of Law’s Struggle with Violence: Ambivalence in the “Routine” Jurisprudence of Interrogations in the United States, she notes that the U.S. denied their, “own role in authorizing the actions (denial of responsibility)” (Lokaneeta, 43). Today, we see the continued ramifications of our military presence in Afghanistan. Even though there is awareness and conversation around the US’s involvement in torture, the denial is still present.

References
Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Translated by Alan Sheridan.
New York: Vintage Books, 1977.
Keefe, Mike. “The Denver Post .” The Denver Post , The Denver Post, 2007.
Lokaneeta, Jinee. Transnational Torture: Law, Violence, and State Power in the United States       
and India. New York University Press, 2016.

“The Faces of Denial”
​By: Luis Leroux, David Rosenblum, Nick Defuria, Megyn MacMullen
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In these images of Condoleezza Rice and George Bush we see examples of Stanley Cohen’s concept of Literal and Interpretive Denial, as quoted by Jinee Lokaneeta in her book Transnational Torture, laid bare. These images react to the revelations surrounding the incidence of extraordinary rendition and the abuses which it facilitated in Abu Ghraib and Bagram. In the Rice cartoon, we see the artist, Jimmy Margulies, bring attention to the role that interpretive denial played in the construction of the American torture regime by giving officials a language through which they could downplay the severity or very incidence of abuse. In the Bush cartoon, created by artist Mark Fiore, we see the government's ability to exert its power to completely deny the existence of torture, in an example of Cohen’s conceptualization of literal denial. The contemporary significance of these cartoons relies on their modern day relevance. While the faces of torturers may have changed, the existence of black sites continue to be a blemish upon America’s reputation. They continue to operate under unethical means, utilizing the power of the state to obfuscate any information which may be disseminated.  

References
Lokaneeta, Jinee. Chapter 1: “Law’s Struggle with Violence: Ambivalence in the “Routine”
Jurisprudence of Interrogations in the United States” in Transnational Torture.
Fiore, Mark. “Top Secret.” 17 November 2005.
Margulies, Jimmy. “Rice Decries Torture.” The Comic News. 14 December 2005.

Internal Imprisonment
By Mariia, Sam, Marta

                                                                    “Captive” by Todd Tarselli

Some of the themes we related this political cartoon to were the transition from the spectacle of torture to a more private form of torture, specifically Foucault's idea that torture has become about imprisonment and detainment. Furthermore, this cartoon shows the more modern psychological form of torture. This is shown in the way he seems to be imprisoned within his own mind. This cartoon could also be demonstrating an after effect of torture in that the effects never leave and the tortured experiences post traumatic stress. Even though he may be free, torture and pain can be hard to describe with words and the experience leaves him trapped with his memories. In a contemporary sense we related this to the U.S. and its current detainee program in which they often deprive detainees of their senses using blindfolds and earmuffs leaving them only with their own thoughts. Prolonged exposure may lead to the detainee having mental issues and effectively “going crazy” from being trapped with only their own thoughts.

References
Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Translated by Alan Sheridan.
New York: Vintage Books, 1977.

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