Estudos sobre o Comunismo

SOBRE A TORTURA

Nota enviada pelos Avatares do Desejo sobre a tortura:

"Estando o tema do corpo/dor/sofrimento entre as minhas preocupações académicas, queria apenas partilhar com os Estudos sobre o comunismo algumas contribuições de ordem teórica advindas de algumas leituras recentes que julgo poderem ser pertinentes:

Scarry, Ellen, 1985, The Body in Pain, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Scarry ilustra assim o paradoxo do exercício da tortura por um poder político:

The physical pain is so incontestably real that it seems to confer its quality of "incontestable reality" on that power that has brought into being. It is, of course, precisely because the reality of that power is so highly contestable, the regime so unstable, that torture is being used.

Reflecte sobre a ideia de traição nas confissões sob tortura a partir da ideia que dor extrema conduz ao unmaking of the world:

What is meant by "seeing stars" is that the contents of consciousness are, during those moments, obliterated, that the name of one's child, the memory of a friend's face, are all absent. But the nature of this "absence" is not illuminated by the word "betrayal." One cannot betray or be false to something that has ceased to exist and, in the most literal way possible, the created world of thought and feeling, all the psychological and mental content that constitutes both one's self and one's world, and that gives rise to and is in turn made possible by language, ceases to exist.
...
The confession is one crucial demonstration of this absent world, but there are others. "