Torture

Torture is not as universally condemned as it once was.

After 9/11, its apologists could use the war on terror to justify a practice that has in fact never fallen completely out of use, in democracies no less than under dictatorships.

From Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons to the death of Giulio Regeni, countless recent cases have shocked public opinion.

But if we want to defend the human dignity that torture violates, simple indignation is not enough.

In this penetrating text, Donatella Di Cesare seeks insight from philosophers, playwrights, directors and poets to provide a critical perspective on torture in all its dimensions, culminating in a wholly original phenomenology of torture.