REVIEW – THE WORLDWIDE PRACTICE OF TORTURE
Mark Welch

Metapsychology
Feb 5 2008
NY

This book does not make for happy reading. Although we might like to
think of torture as something rather barbaric that happened ever such a
long time ago in places far, far away, Edgerton reminds us that torture
is commonly practiced in at least 132 countries (as well as numerous
smaller tribal societies) as we speak. Torture is with us today and
is carried out with increasing sophistication, and with an astonishing
array of justifications. This is important but unhappy reading

Torture is usually held, at least according to the 1985 UN Convention,
to be any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or
mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as
obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession,
inflicting punishment, inducing coercion and so on. The form it
takes is only limited by the human imagination, which it seems is
not limited enough. It is often justified by greater needs: the
security of the state, to counter a terrorist threat or suppress
sedition or heresy. It seems to have been common on every continent,
under every form of political system, and in most religions. It
has been practiced by the godly and ungodly, by men, women and
children, by soldiers and civilians, by sophisticates and sadists,
by democrats and demagogues. Sometimes it has been seen as a way to
a more reliable truth — Torquemada’s instigation of the Inquisition
felt that torturing someone until a confession of heresy was obtained
had a certain undeniable logic; the Romans routinely ignored any
testimony by slaves unless it was extracted under torture because
nothing a slave said voluntarily could be believed.

In this rather short book (only a little over 100 pages including
notes) Edgerton does not sketch a historical picture, but rather a
geographical one. He deals in turn with the British in Kenya at the
time of the Mau Mau rebellion, Turkey especially around the time of
the Armenian massacres, the Korean war, the Algerian war, torture in
the Americas and, finally, torture in small-scale societies. He is
even handed in his political judgments, not passing comment on the
motivation apart from describing the perpetrators’ avowed intentions.
He attempts to be current, commenting for example on the Maher Arar
affair in which a Syrian-born Canadian citizen was first seized by
officials of the USA and then transported in secret to Syria where
he was interrogated (you can insert your own quotation marks if you
like) by the state police, and also the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib
in Iraq. It is a shame for the book’s sake that he was not able to
deal with the emerging details of who knew what and when about the
excesses at Guantanamo Bay.

However, although Edgerton graphically describes some of the practices
from different countries around the world, he does not offer anything
either very illuminating about the root causes. He cites some of
the well-known literature from experimental psychology such as the
Zimbardo prison experiment or Milgram’s obedience studies, but can
only find descriptions, not explanations. He says in his conclusion
that the reason why torture has been so widespread remains a mystery;
that the propensity to torture (and enjoy it) seems to be part of the
human condition. It may have been interesting to examine the place
of Otherness in the justification of horrendous acts, or consider
the difference between torture in secrecy and the public infliction
of extreme pain and suffering and a simple summary execution. Why,
once the information or confession has been extracted, does torture
linger so long? Is there something in the very deliberateness of the
act that is significant? What does it tell us about the exercise of
power, about the control of life and death, about the fear it instills
in the observer — it can, it has been noted both concentrate the
mind and encourage the others very effectively.

Although some care agencies such as the Canadian Centre for the
Victims of Torture (CCVT) are mentioned, what they actually do is
not deeply explored (and reading the book you would not know that
the first such centre was the International Rehabilitation Council
for Torture Victims (IRCT) in Denmark in 1974, nor that that they
exist all over the world). The psychological effects of torture may
in some ways be more pervasive than the physical ones. After such a
litany of despair, some hope, some possibility of recovery or even a
sense of meaning out of the chaos might be welcome. Is it possible
to come out of such an experience with any meaning at all? Is the
very irrationality of torture part of its effect?

In fact, although the book is subtitled "A preliminary report" and
there may be more to come, at the end it seems both deflating and
more than a little pessimistic. There is more than enough detail of
atrocity, and perhaps that is enough. These facts need to be stated,
but the reader may be left with a rather despairing view of both
humanity and the future. Hobbes, with whom the book ends, was no
cheerleader for the human spirit, and this book has very little cheer
in it as well.