Human Rights and Human BodiesThe Road to Guantanamo and the Prohibition on Torture

The prohibition on tortureBecause of the ways it violates the bodies, torture also violates the fundamental paradoxes of human rights. Not “both . . . and” but “neither . . . nor.”• Neither natural nor social• Neither universal nor particular• Neither equal nor respectful of difference

The prohibition on tortureAccording to Hunt, transforming the European culture of torture to a culture that abhors torture required that human bodies come to be seen as more real than symbolic.

The prohibition on tortureUnder the traditional understanding, the pains of the body did not belong entirely to the individual condemned person. Those pains had the higher religious and political purpose of redemption and reparation of the community. Bodies could be mutilated in the interest of inscribing authority, and broken or burned in the interest of restoring the moral, political, and religious order. In other words, the offender served as a kind of sacrificial victim whose suffering would restore wholeness to the community and order to the state. (94)

The prohibition on tortureAllegorical Portrait of Anna of Austria as Minerva

(ca. 1643) Allegorical Portrait of Diane de Poitiers (ca. 1556)

The prohibition on torture

Portrait of Captain John Pigott (ca. 1700–1763)

How does the film attempt to recreate the “frame”?

How does the film attempt to recreate the “frame”?By returning, via narrative, symbolic force to the real, physical bodies of the detainees, the film can be said to subvert state power rather than reinforcing it.

How does the film attempt to recreate the “frame”?By returning, via narrative, symbolic force to the real, physical bodies of the detainees, the film can be said to subvert state power rather than reinforcing it.

But does it succeed?

How does the film attempt to recreate the “frame”?Two very familiar and very different plots:

• The Nazi Plot

• The Marriage Plot

The Nazi Plot

Nazi “cattle cars”

The Nazi Plot

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/212254

The Nazi Plot

George Grosz, Nazi Interrogation (1936)

The Nazi Plot

Inglorious Basterds (2009)

The Nazi Plot

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/212255

The Marriage Plot

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/212287

The Marriage Plot

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Jane Eyre