Skip to main content
University of Michigan Press
Fulcrum logo

You can access this title through a library that has purchased it. More information about purchasing is available at our website.

Share the story of what Open Access means to you

a graphic of a lock that is open, the universal logo for open access

University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.

  1. Home
  2. Understanding Torture: Law, Violence, and Political Identity

Understanding Torture: Law, Violence, and Political Identity

John T. Parry 2010
Restricted You do not have access to this book. How to get access.
"John Parry's Understanding Torture is an important contribution to our understanding of how torture fits within the practices and beliefs of the modern state. His juxtaposition of the often indeterminate nature of the law of torture with the very specific state practices of torture is both startling and revealing."

---Paul W. Kahn is Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities at Yale Law School and author of Sacred Violence

"Parry is effective in building, deploying, and supporting his argument . . . that the law does not provide effective protections against torture, but also that the law is in itself constitutive of a political order in which torture is employed to create---and to destroy or re-create---political identities."

---Margaret Satterthwaite, Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and Associate Professor of Clinical Law, NYU School of Law

"A beautifully crafted, convincingly argued book that does not shy away from addressing the legal and ethical complexities of torture in the modern world. In a field that all too often produces simple or superficial responses to what has become an increasingly challenging issue, Understanding Torture stands out as a sophisticated and intellectually responsible work."

---Ruth Miller, Associate Professor of History, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Prohibiting torture will not end it. In Understanding Torture, John T. Parry explains that torture is already a normal part of the state coercive apparatus. Torture is about dominating the victim for a variety of purposes, including public order; control of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities; and--- critically---domination for the sake of domination. Seen in this way, Abu Ghraib sits on a continuum with contemporary police violence in U.S. cities; violent repression of racial minorities throughout U.S. history; and the exercise of power in a variety of political, social, and interpersonal contacts.

Creating a separate category for an intentionally narrow set of practices labeled and banned as torture, Parry argues, serves to normalize and legitimate the remaining practices that are "not torture." Consequently, we must question the hope that law can play an important role in regulating state violence.

 

No one who reads this book can fail to understand the centrality of torture in modern law, politics, and governance.

 

John T. Parry is Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark Law School.

Read Book Buy Book
ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-02178-9 (ebook)
  • 978-0-472-05077-2 (paper)
Subject
  • Law:International Law
  • Middle and Near Eastern Studies
  • Law:Law and Society
  • Law:Supreme Court and Constitutional Law
  • Political Science:Human Rights
  • Law
  • Philosophy
  • Political Science:Political Behavior and Public Opinion
  • Political Science:International Relations
Citable Link
  • Table of Contents

  • Stats

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Contents
  • Preface and Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Law, Language, and Difference
  • CHAPTER ONE    Torture and International Law
  • CHAPTER TWO    The European Law of Torture
  • CHAPTER THREE    Torture and State Violence in U.S. Law
  • CHAPTER FOUR    Torture, Rights, and the Modern State
  • CHAPTER FIVE    Torture in Modern Democracies
  • CHAPTER SIX    U.S. Torture at Home and Abroad
  • CHAPTER SEVEN    Torture in the War on Terror
  • Conclusion: Living with Torture
  • Afterword
  • Notes
  • Works Cited
  • Index
36 views since October 02, 2018
University of Michigan Press logo

University of Michigan Press

Powered by Fulcrum logo

  • About
  • Blog
  • Feedback
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Accessibility
  • Preservation
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Service
  • Log In
© University of Michigan Press 2020
x This site requires cookies to function correctly.