ABSTRACT

Since the Enlightenment, the legal and moral ban on torture has been part of the self-understanding of Western societies. Following World War II, the ban was legally anchored in many international treaties and legislatively updated. Its inviolability is presently considered an international norm.1 But in reality, as the literary scholar and researcher on violence Jan Philipp Reemtsma has indicated (1991: 256), torture “was never abolished.”2 Torture and mistreatment surface repeatedly, both in crisis situations like the Algerian and Northern Ireland confl icts and in constellations of “total institutions” (Goffman 1961) such as police custody, the prison, and military training. Most recently, there has even been talk of torture’s “return” (Beestermöller and Brunkhorst 2006)—of that practice as something that since the terror attacks of 11 September 2001 has again become evident and discussible. Photos from the Abu Ghraib prison, surfacing in 2004, thus not only presented people with the human potential for ugly behavior but also the functioning of a “chain of command” (Hersh 2004; Sands 2008) authorizing torture and mistreatment in the name of combating terrorism (Danner 2004; Greenberg and Dratel 2005; Mayer 2008). Apparently unaffected by these revelations, a debate has simultaneously been unfolding concerning the legitimacy and even legalization of torture in certain circumstances. It has occupied both literary supplements and scholarly publications and has donned an honorable cloak, articulating itself in the name of saving lives.3