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4.5 Maiming and Torture

“…it is not necessary to be wounded by a bullet in order to suffer from the fact of war in body as well as in mind” (Fanon 1963, 290)1

“The most crucial fact about pain is its presentness and the most crucial fact about torture is that it is happening” (Scarry 1985, 9, emphasis in original)2

The preceding sections have introduced the concept of necropolitics and the need to broaden its scope to encompass various forms of power, violence, and the manipulation of death as techniques of political violence. With the human body occupying a central role in these biopolitical forms of violence, it is crucial to explore how vulnerability to violence arises and how resistance to sovereign violence targeting Palestinians intersects with these vulnerabilities. The forthcoming section will outline the framework of vulnerability and its connection to individuals who exist in a state of resistance against oppressive ruling powers.

The motives behind government-sanctioned torture can vary greatly, but the ultimate aim is to use the tortured individual as a means of setting an example to the wider community, thereby weakening political opposition, consolidating political power, and deterring others from engaging in political activities (Jaranson et al. 2001)3. Torture, in essence, is a tool for control and degradation. The physical consequences of torture, resulting from the infliction of structural and psychological harm, can have long-lasting effects. These injuries can be caused by various means, such as blows to the head and body, repeated flogging of the feet, suspension by the wrists or arms, restraint by tying the body or extremities, cutting, electroshocks, chemical burning or corrosion, dental procedures without anaesthesia, prolonged immobilisation in a fixed position, and sexual assault (Başoğlu et al. 2001)4.

Mbembe introduces the notion of “new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead” within the realm of necropolitics (Mbembe 2003, 40, emphasis in original)5. Expanding on the discussions of life and death within the biopolitical framework, Jasbir K. Puar (Puar 2017)6 examines disability, debility, and capacity, highlighting their significance as they deviate from viewing death as the ultimate objective. Puar introduces the concept of the “right to maim,” distinct from the “right to kill,” as a deliberate act of debilitation serving a different biopolitical purpose. The oscillation between these rights is not accidental, and the act of maiming should not be conflated with the biopower that pertains to the right to live or let live. The right to live and the right to kill are integral elements within the racialised biopolitical logic of security, shedding light on the power exerted over people. The interplay of disability, capacity, and debility is a component of biopolitical control over individuals and populations. Maiming, as the most intense manifestation of biopolitical debilitation, operates as a means of extracting value from populations deemed disposable.

In the context of colonised spaces, the utilisation of the right to maim as a biopolitical tactic poses challenges in aligning it with Mbembe’s framework of necropolitics. Puar (Puar 2017)6 introduces the concept of debilitation, which triangulates the hierarchies of living and dying within the biopolitical sphere. Maiming, according to Puar, operates as a slow yet intensive form of death-making, simultaneously functioning as an accelerated assault on both the physical body and the infrastructure of care while disguising itself as a refusal to let die. This raises the question of where maiming fits within the framework. Is it encompassed by necropolitics, or does it exist as a separate construct? Puar highlights that the right to kill can manifest as the right to maim, targeting both physical bodies and infrastructure of care for deliberate harm. In an attempt to diversify the understanding of necropolitics, Bargu asserts that Puar’s approach allows for the recognition of necropolitics in various modalities and emphasises the selective deployment of different tactics based on the meaning and valuation of their targets (Bargu 2019, 6--7)7. These notions are important in understanding the notion of slow erasure, which I will explain later in this thesis, but also in understanding the modalities of violence described within the analytical chapters.

The use of torture can also be interpreted through the lens of necropolitics. Wadiwel (Wadiwel 2003)8 argues that torture involves a careful balance of violence that falls short of causing death, requiring a particular form of care that revives and heals the tortured individual. Consequently, torture encompasses both violent acts and the insidious administration of care focused on preserving life under torture. In this sense, torture can indeed be seen as part of necropolitics.

The use of multiple forms of torture can result in overlapping injuries, making it difficult to attribute specific symptoms to particular types of torture (Skyvl 1992)9. In the study of torture, Derrick Silove (Silove 1999; Silove et al. 2007; Kirmayer et al. 2018)10 11 12 has identified five adaptive biosocial systems that correspond to emotional reactions and psychopathological effects. These systems include attachments and social bonds, safety and security, social identity and role, justice and human rights, and existential meaning. The relationship between trauma response, recovery, and interpersonal processes of social support and solidarity is complex (Maercker and Horn 2013)13. Still, we rely on these stable attachments to others for emotional sustenance and self-regulation throughout our lives (Kirmayer et al. 2018)12. The experience of torture can disrupt an individual’s stable frame of reference, as the aim of torture is to isolate the target from familiar frames of reference and undermine their values and sense of agency. During torture, systematic attacks on identity and social and moral standing within the community are aimed at undermining values, self-worth, and a sense of purpose, thereby eroding the individual’s control over their social identity and self-esteem. Survivors of torture often encounter challenges in sharing their traumatic experiences until their basic needs are addressed and trust is established (Jaranson et al. 2001)3. Some individuals may be unwilling to testify about their traumatic experiences due to feelings of shame or fear of further trauma.

To fully grasp the long-term effects of torture and maiming, it is essential to recognise that these practices do not end with physical injury. Instead, within settler-colonialism, they function as sustained assaults on Indigenous identity, subjectivity, and relationality. Within the settler-colonial necropolitical order, torture is not only intended to inflict bodily pain, but to destabilise the victim’s sense of self, their social roles, and their place within a broader collective. This is especially evident in the psychological aftermath of torture, where disorders such as PTSD emerge not simply as medical conditions, but as political effects. These are tools of governance that persist long after the immediate violence has passed, disrupting memory, emotion, attachment, and the capacity to resist. In this way, PTSD must be understood as part of the settler-colonial strategy of maiming: not only to harm the individual, but to unravel the coherence of Indigenous lives and communities.

Both primary and secondary survivors experience the impact of torture. Primary survivors are individuals who themselves have been subjected to torture or have witnessed the torture of others, while secondary survivors are those closely connected to the primary survivors, such as their family members or partners (Rabin and Willard 2014)14. When examining the psychological effects of torture, clinical research on PTSD often focuses on trauma-related distress. It is important to recognise that individuals cope with traumatic experiences in various ways, as highlighted by theoretical models of PTSD (Agaibi and Wilson 2005)15. Emotions such as shame, guilt, anger, mistrust, and sadness are commonly associated with PTSD (Glover 1988; Reynolds and Brewin 1999)16 17, with particularly intense levels of shame and anger linked to trauma (Brewin et al. 2000)18.

PTSD shares symptoms such as flashbacks and emotional numbing, which can be described as feeling detached from others or being unable to experience love, with dissociative disorders (Moskowitz 2004)19. The concept of dissociation was introduced by Pierre Janet (Ellenberger 1970)20. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, dissociation is defined as “a disruption in the usual integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of an environment” (American Psychiatric Association 2000, 456)21. Dissociation occurs when individuals, unable to fight or escape abuse, psychologically numb themselves or distance themselves to cope with the violence they endure (Perry et al. 1995)22. Research on individuals who experienced childhood abuse has indicated that the cycle of violence or intergenerational transmission may be validated to some extent, although the developmental mechanisms behind this process remain unclear (Haapasalo and Pokela 1999, 116)23. Other studies suggest that dissociation serves as a mechanism for perpetuating the transmission of abuse across generations (Narang and Contreras 2000)24. Individuals who have survived atrocities often struggle to overcome the overwhelming memories of these events, which continue to disrupt their efforts to build a meaningful life for themselves (Alayarian 2011)25.

Flashbacks, which involve the reliving of traumatic events, are a central symptom of PTSD and are considered to be dissociative in nature (Moskowitz 2004)19. These flashbacks can range from a few seconds to several hours or even days, during which individuals reexperience parts of the traumatic events as if they were happening again in the present (American Psychiatric Association 2000, 464)21. It is understandable how reliving traumatic events through flashbacks can lead to episodes of violent behaviour. In fact, Silva et al. (Silva et al. 2001)26 highlight in their review on violence in PTSD that flashbacks are one of the primary causes of violence in individuals with PTSD. Alongside dissociation, aggression is also a core feature of PTSD (Novaco and Chemtob 2002)27. These emotional and psychological impacts are not merely individual pathologies but must be understood as effects of necropolitical power, forms of violence that aim not only to kill, but to maim, debilitate, and destabilise both bodies and communities. As discussed earlier, necropolitics functions not just through physical death, but through the slow destruction of social life, memory, and identity. These theories on trauma are therefore central to the ethical considerations I outlined in Chapter Two, as PTSD can re-emerge during interviews, particularly when discussing embodied experiences of occupation, incarceration, and torture, core elements of the necropolitical regime under Israeli settler-colonialism.

It is necessary to emphasise that the violence that leads to trauma has to be placed within the settler-colonial framework. This violence, though directly aimed at an individual in the case of torture, is often directed at the Palestinian people as a whole (Marshall and Sousa 2017)28, what Veronica Gago (Gago 2020)29 terms the body-collectivity. This becomes an important aspect when dealing with trauma inflicted through violence and occupation. Rather than understanding the trauma through a Western approach which solely treats the individual, “suffering and endurance need to be interpreted at both the individual and the collective level” (Nguyen-Gillham et al. 2008)30. I will touch upon intergenerational aspects of trauma further in this section. Criticisms towards Western perspectives include that the causes and effects of political violence are purely medical, that one can measure the effects of mass trauma individually, that undiagnosed or undiagnosable people are not affected, and that solutions need to be found in the individual and not within society or the community (Summerfield 1999)31.

Feminist scholars have set out to problematise such binaries as emotions/reason, mind/body, and domestic/international. For instance, Sara Ahmed argues that to understand emotions, it is crucial to examine the hierarchy between them, as emotions are closely tied to the reinforcement of social hierarchy. This connection, where emotions become associated with valued bodily traits, leads to a broader discussion on the relationship between emotions, bodily sensations, and cognition. Ahmed posits that people are shaped by their interactions with objects and others, and as emotions involve (re)actions or relations of ‘towardness’ or ‘awayness’ in relation to such objects, they can be considered relational (Ahmed 2014, 1--8)32.

This relationality is illustrated in the following quote:

[T]o be touched in a certain way, or to be moved in a certain way by an encounter with another, may involve a reading not only of the encounter, but of the other that is encountered as having certain characteristics. If we feel another hurts us, then that feeling may convert quickly into a reading of the other, such that it becomes hurtful, or is read as the impression of the negative. In other words, the ‘it hurts’ becomes, ‘you hurt me’, which might become, ‘you are hurtful’, or even ‘you are bad’. These affective responses are readings that not only create the borders between selves and others, but also ‘give’ others meaning and value in the very act of apparent separation, a giving that temporarily fixes another, through the movement engendered by the affective response itself. Such responses are clearly mediated: materialisation takes place through the ‘mediation’ of affect, which may function in this way as readings of the bodies of others (Ahmed 2014, 28)32.

For Ahmed (Ahmed 2014)32, emotions are how humans respond to objects and other individuals and allow the delineation of the individual and the social as if they are objects, which makes emotions take shape as effects of circulation. She uses the circulation of emotion rather than emotional contagion, as put forward by Carroll E. Izard (Izard 1977)33, as this model can lead to the interpretation that the same emotions are passed on between individuals. Hence, Ahmed suggests that the objects of emotion circulate rather than the emotion itself. These objects become sites of personal and social tension, saturated with affect. Regarding this movement of emotions, Ahmed argues that they can be regarded as attachments that connect us to certain things, making the relationship between emotions and movement instructive.

At the level of lived experiences, sensations of pain and emotions cannot be separated, which becomes clear when we look at how memories and the sensation of pain share an affective relationship; for instance, encounters with others can make past traumas resurface (Ahmed 2014)32. This is, for instance, the case in torture as the traumas endured can resurface. When someone suffers pain, it is usually invisible to others, let alone others being able to grasp the pain the person is experiencing (Scarry 1985)2.

As the above suggests, emotions are hard to navigate, especially in connection to violence. The question then arises of how emotions, especially those rooted in pain and suffering, are transmitted between people. In the case of the transmission of negative emotions, the consequences can have severe physical and emotional impacts on others. Indeed, challenging the assumption that emotions belong in the private sphere, Ahmed argues that, rather than emotions, which are phenomenologically always intentional and directed towards another or an object, belonging to individuals and originating from within to be projected outwards, emotions “define the contours of the multiple worlds that are inhabited by different subjects” (Ahmed 2014, 25)32.

Ahmed’s argument that emotion needs to be located in the interweaving of the personal and the social is rooted within the literature of phenomenology and post-structuralism but specifies her claim that the distinction of movement of emotions between the inside (the individual) and the outside (the social) is affected in the first place (Ahmed 2014)32. The contact with others or objects can bring forth emotions and, in the case of trauma due to violence, make individuals react in certain ways, which Ahmed describes as the contact with other people or objects as involving both the subject as well as the history that precedes the subject. As to the histories, these are infatuated with attachments that stay with us and are lived as intense or intimate. Affect can be transmitted through bodily encounters (Brennan 2004)34. This can involve physical proximity, where individuals can influence each other in subtle or overt ways. Thus, people can impact each other by affecting their movement, with individuals being disorganised and reorganised when facing others; they love (giving pleasure) or hate (giving pain) (Ahmed 2014)32.

References

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  2. Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain. Oxford University Press. Oxford University Press. ↩↩

  3. Jaranson, James M., J. David Kinzie, Merle Friedman, et al. 2001. "Assessment, Diagnosis, and Intervention." In The Mental Health Consequences of Torture. Springer Science+Business Media. ↩↩

  4. Başoğlu, Metin, James M. Jaranson, Richard Mollica, and Marianne Kastrup. 2001. The Mental Health Consequences of Torture. 35--62. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1295-0\_3. ↩

  5. Mbembe, Achille. 2003. "Necropolitics." Translated by Libby Meintjes. Public Culture 15 (1): 11--40. ↩

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  32. Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. 2nd ed. Edinburgh University Press. Edinburgh University Press. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

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  34. Brennan, Teresa. 2004. The Transmission of Affect. Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.1354/books/unregistered/9780801471377. ↩