Performing 'Legitimate' Torture
Towards a Cultural Pragmatics of Atrocity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3202665 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carlo Tognato (0000-0003-0505-4246, National University of Colombia, Bogotá,, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 103 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 88-96 |
| Publication date | 2010-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Thesis Eleven (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0725513610386090 |
| OpenAlex | W1986792095 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 7 |
Scholars have traditionally explained away torture as an act of monstrosity. Hannah Arendt has proposed instead a socio-cultural explanation of the phenomenon. Modern rationality, she suggests, constitutes the legitimacy principle that grounds the bureaucracy of repression and that perpetrators can ultimately tap into for the purpose of justifying their deeds. I will suggest, instead, that modern technical rationality is per se not sufficient to justify torture. Rather, to do so, it must undergo a profound transformation as a result of its being linked to deeper moral logics. Linkage, in turn, is a matter of cultural performance. To tackle the question of legitimacy in torture, it is therefore necessary to address its cultural pragmatics. Jeffrey Alexander's latest work on social performance can help in this respect
Bureaucracy · Epistemology · Human rights · Legitimacy · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Pragmatics · Rationality · Sociology · Torture · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Philosophy · Torture, Ethics, and Law
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2020 (5) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |