Tortured bodies’

The biopolitics of torture and truth in Chile

Bibliographic Data

ID12592719
AuthorsTeresa Macías (0000-0003-1111-644X, University of Victoria, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume17
Issue1
Pages113-132
Publication date2012-07-24
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe International Journal of Human Rights (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1364-2987 • E-ISSN: 1744-053X
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13642987.2012.701912
OpenAlexW2012835386
LanguageEN
Citations received7

In the same way that torture has become a common and privileged instrument of war and political repression, and a regular occurrence of our time, so, too, has the question of how to speak and account for torture and its legacies become a concern and an unavoidable issue for nations either transitioning from periods of torture or invested in separating themselves from regimes of torture. In Chile, the democratic transition that ended the authoritarian regime in 1990 gave way to demands for the recognition of torture and other human rights violations. In 2003, Chile instituted the Torture Commission, its second truth and reconciliation commission. This article uses the Foucaultian concept of biopower to analyse the strategies and practices used by the Torture Commission to produce a national truth about torture by critically looking at the implications and challenges of organising national processes of accounting for practices such as torture

Authoritarianism · Biopower · Commission · Criminology · Democracy · Human rights · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Torture · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Torture, Ethics, and Law

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