Prison as a Torturous Institution Philosophers working on torture have largely failed to address the widespread use of torture in the U.S. prison system. Drawing on a victim-focused definition of torture, I argue that the U.S. prison system is a torturous institution in which direct torture occurs (the use of solitary confinement) and in which torture is allowed to occur through the toleration of sexual assault of inmates and the conditions of mass incarceration. The use and toleration of torture expresses (...) and reinforces the moral exclusion of those subjected to it, particularly African Americans. Importantly, this moral exclusion and the experience of torture may be created and reinforced through institutional practices independently of the intentions of individuals acting within those institutions. By prioritizing torture victims’ experiences and severing the link between torture and intention, my account forces a recognition that, far from being inconsistent with U.S. values, torture is deeply embedded within U.S. institutions. (shrink)

Violence has become a prominent topic in recent phenomenological investigations. In this paper, I wish to contribute to this ongoing discourse by looking at violence in a literal sense as violation of experiential structures, insofar as it is intentionally, purposefully, and strategically imposed on a subject by another agent. Phenomenology provides the descriptive methodology for elucidating such structures. The violation can take the form of a radicalization, in which one of the aspects of polar experiential spectra becomes predominant, i.e. the (...) balance between them is shifted to one extreme. I focus on the relationship between self and other on the one hand, and the relationship between body-as-subject and body-as-object on the other, as prominent topoi in the phenomenological literature. With regard to torture and solitary confinement as forms of extreme violence, I analyze how these structures are disturbed. (shrink)

Resumen El objetivo principal del artículo es ahondar en la experiencia de la tortura desde una postura fenomenológica con la finalidad de dilucidar las diferencias entre las posibles representaciones de la muerte que una persona puede experimentar y la vivencia de la tortura. De acuerdo con esta investigación, primero explicaré en qué sentido se tomará el fenómeno de la muerte, dando paso a la relación que el dolor y la tortura mantienen, para mostrar que la terrible naturaleza de esta actividad (...) no se encuentra ligada al violento proceso afectivo desencadenado mediante el dolor, sino a la impotencia que el ser humano siente al saberse torturado por otro. De esta forma, se rompe cualquier nexo que el torturado pueda tener con el mundo. La tortura no genera una experiencia realmente dada de la muerte, pero sí proporciona al sujeto trascendental la vivencia más cercana que podría tener de su propia muerte.The main objective in the article is to delve in the experience of torture from a phenomenological stance to elucidate the differences between the possible representations of death that a person can experience and the experience of torture. According to this investigation, first I explain in what sense the phenomenon of death will be understood, to give way to the relation that pain and torture have. In order to show that the terrible nature of torture it is not bound to the affective violent process that is triggered by pain, rather to the helplessness that the human being feels when it knows that he is being tortured by the other. In this way, the tortured breaks any nexus that it may have with the world. Torture does not generate a truly given experience of death, but it does provide the transcendental subject with the closest experience that he may have of his own death. (shrink)