Hostile Witness
Torture Testimony in the War on Terror
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12648726 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nina Philadelphoff-Puren (Institute for Literary Studies, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 219-236 |
| Publication date | 2008-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Life Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1448-4528 • E-ISSN: 1751-2964 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14484520802386568 |
| OpenAlex | W2045527924 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 11 |
In Australia, for example, the torture testimony of former Guantanamo Bay detainees Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks has still not been formally investigated. As a result, it languishes on the borders of public debate, unable to generate the political emotions that could fuel an official inquiry. I argue that this testimonial intransitivity is the result of three entwined phenomena: the normative narrative framework of the War on Terror which consigns torture testimony to the domain of the unspeakable; the operation of the ‘hostile witness’, a form of the second person committed to discrediting rather than enabling traumatic narratives; and systematic attacks on detainees as speaking subjects, evident at the level of rhetoric and law
Acknowledgement · Art · Computer security · Criminology · Human rights · Interrogation · Literature · Narrative · Normative · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Testimonial · Torture · Witness · Gender, Security, and Conflict · International Law and Human Rights · Law · Philosophy · Torture, Ethics, and Law
| Citations per year | 0.08 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2014 - 2014 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |