ABlog

As proofs of Vivaldi’s innocence had not been obtained, the suspicions of his examiners, of course, were not removed; and, as he persisted in denying the truth of the charge which he understood would be exhibited against him, and refused to make any confession of crimes, it was ordered that he should, within three hours, be put to the question….The seeming ignominy of his situation, and his ignorance as to the degree of torture to be applied, overcame the calmness he had before exhibited, and as he paced his cell, cold damps, which hung upon his forehead, betrayed the agony of his mind….
--The Italian, by Ann Radcliffe

Concatenation of oddly related content: I’ve just finished Ann Radcliffe’s 1797 blockbuster The Italian, a Gothic romance set in “exotic” Naples and the Roman dungeons of the Catholic Inquisition. Despite the archaic flavor imparted by the novel’s stately diction and the author’s quaint preference for hints of horror instead of graphic depictions, the content relating to interrogations by an arrogant regime convinced of its own righteousness has an uncannily contemporary ring.

It was about midnight, that Vivaldi heard steps approaching, and a murmur of voices at the door of his cell. He understood these to be the persons come to summon him to the torture. The door was unbarred, and two men, habited in black, appeared at it. Without speaking, they advanced, and throwing over him a singular kind of mantle, led him from the chamber.
--The Italian


During the course of my progress through this 18th century thriller, I also read from cover to cover a special issue of The Nation subheaded “The Torture Complex” (December 26, 2005). In her contribution, entitled “‘Never Before!’ Our Amnesiac Torture Debate,” Naomi Klein points out that, contrary to the shocked statements of many liberal commentators who regard the Bush administration’s behavior as a radical departure from previous habits of state, the only thing that’s really new is officials’ openness about their commitment to inflicting extreme physical and psychological pain on “enemies”; “the [covert] embrace of torture by US officials long predates the Bush Administration and has in fact been integral to US foreign policy since the Vietnam War” (11). (Considering the slave-holding, genocidal origins of the polis, one ought certainly to consider the domestic face of torture as well, but for the time being, let’s stick to foreign policy.) Klein goes on: “Other cultures deal with a legacy of torture by declaring ‘Never again!’ Why do so many Americans insist on dealing with the current torture crisis by crying ‘Never Before’?” (12).

Along the galleries, and other avenues through which they passed, not any person was seen, and, by the profound stillness that reigned, it seemed as if death had already anticipated his work in these regions of horror, and had condemned alike the tortured and the torturer.
--The Italian


I’ve been pondering the pervasiveness of images and invocations of torture in our current cultural environment. The following passage by Radcliffe brings to mind my childhood reading of books that invoked the horror of the torture chambers of European monarchy. I can remember thinking, with a dread-filled yet not wholly unpleasurable shudder, that it must have been awful to live in ancient times, when progress and enlightenment had not yet done away with instruments diabolically engineered to inflict pain on vulnerable bodies.

At some distance from the tribunal stood a large iron frame, which Vivaldi conjectured to be the rack, and near it another, resembling, in shape, a coffin, but, happily, he could not distinguish through the remote obscurity, any person undergoing actual suffering. In the vaults beyond, however, the diabolical decrees of the inquisitors seemed to be fulfilling; for, whenever a distant door opened for a moment, sounds of lamentation issued forth….
--The Italian


Where did the imagination of torture hide during the years when it wasn’t such an acceptable dinner table topic, when it wasn’t as respectable as it’s suddenly become for a certain class of privileged intellectuals to elaborate gleeful arguments in its favor—or for pop music stars to celebrate the enlistment of their recorded hits in the torture fest? (Moustafa Bayoumi’s Nation contribution, “Disco Inferno,” records that Metallica’s James Hetfield told an interviewer he was proud to learn that his band’s music had reportedly been blasted to help break Iraqis down during interrogations [34].) Is there an underground culture of torture that makes it easier for soldiers to figure out how to proceed when the winks and nods tell them the gloves can come off?

No sooner do I type this naive question than I begin to think of the many “unofficial” roots of torture in daily life: ubiquitous domestic violence and sexual coercion of women, children, and insufficiently hardened men; legacies of lynching and other race-based atrocities; the “ordinary” experiences of war; the fag bashing; the casual rubbing out of transgendered people; the sway held by imperial police over impoverished neighborhoods; the habits of the heart engendered within the depths of the prison-industrial complex; the pornographic rituals of Death Row reportage.

Not to mention the virtual torture, all the fantasy depictions. (Richard Kim’s Nation article, “Pop Torture,” explores some ways in which popular culture in general, and cop shows in particular, justify "torture as necessary to preserve not just US national security but law, authority and agency in general” (37).

And what about religion?

My childhood thinking on these topics was informed by a confused, autodidactic Christianity that focused extensively on the fear of hell. Yet I only recently grasped the obvious fact that a religion whose central symbol is the cross is a religion quite literally organized around the glorification of torture. I was struck by this most forcefully during the past week while listening to radio station WKCR’s annual Bach Fest. I absolutely adore certain dark, lamenting passages in both the St. Matthew and St. John Passions. They give beautiful form to a bottomless, wholly realistic grief in the face of some ways the world is.

But where, I wonder, is the line between an emotional orientation that fully faces the extent of really existing suffering and one that begins to justify it—begins to develop an investment in ramifying pain (whether via martyrdom or outer-directed violence or both) as an imagined antidote?

Suffering calls out to suffering; hurt begets hurt. That is what I saw in the first hours of shock after they drove the airplanes into the towers: whoever decided to brand such images on our retinas has meant to perform a powerful spell that will call forth more of the same, world without end.

“He was nailed to the cross for me”? No thanks.

That any human being should willingly afflict a fellow being who had never injured, or even offended him; that, unswayed by passion, he should deliberately become the means of torturing him, appeared to Vivaldi nearly incredible! But when he looked at the three persons who composed the tribunal, and considered that they had not only voluntarily undertaken the cruel office they fulfilled, but had probably long regarded it as the summit of their ambition, his astonishment and indignation were unbounded.
--The Italian


Torture is all around us, with obvious roots in something as simple as yesterday’s New York Times article about the heinous shortcomings of the company that provides healthcare for inmates of New York State prisons. “Rendition,” Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo—these are simply the capstone, the inevitable conclusion, of ways we’ve been living right along. Yet, because this is America in the years where everything has come to seem madly spun and suspiciously virtual, the implications of this fact are not readily apparent. The media are filled with talk and pictures of torture (often euphemized as “abuse”), but somehow what that means hasn’t yet come home to the homeland. Tonight I heard a rebroadcast of a “Fresh Air” interview, taped earlier this year, with Terry Gross interviewing George Clooney about his film “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Clooney rather jauntily explained why, despite its deficiencies, he thinks our country is making progress: under McCarthyism, you could be hauled up in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, but now right-wing talk show hosts just call you nasty names.

Recently, a writing student of mine who grew up in India described to me what it had felt like to move to the U.S. In America, she said, life seems so quiet and contained. In India, people are always in your face, talking about their problems, loudly letting you know their dissatisfactions. You can’t leave your house without encountering all that noise. In America, you can run around on your own little track, dealing with pretty much whatever you choose to deal with and not a whole lot more.

Torture nation, that’s us—inside and out. Yet our collective awareness seems to partake of the fortunate insulation of Ann Radcliffe’s Vivaldi; in the heart of the torture chamber, happily, we cannot distinguish through the remote obscurity, any person undergong actual suffering.