Torture as a Political Technology: A Socio-Political Analysis of the Widespread Use of Torture

这是一个有影响力的跨学科研究使用酷刑作为一种政治技术。将与一个国际民间社会组织（以色列禁止酷刑公共委员会）和联合王国的两所大学（SOAS和QUB）合作开展这项工作。过去二十年的事件表明，酷刑不能被视为过去的遗物，这突出表明调查其运作和内在逻辑的重要性。我们这样做的重点是以色列作为一个案例研究。与其他殖民和后殖民政权一样，以色列使用酷刑不是罕见的例外，而是系统性的。独立人权专家估计，大约50%的巴勒斯坦人直接或间接地受到以色列安全机构的酷刑。因此，以色列为调查广泛使用酷刑的影响提供了典型的案例研究。首先，我们的研究探讨了有系统地使用酷刑的目的是对目标社区做些什么。将酷刑作为一种政治技术（Foucault 1975），我们研究了它是否以及如何试图塑造主体，社区关系和政治关系。因此，我们将酷刑视为一种超越野蛮暴力的现象，而应视为一种控制人口的殖民技术。第二，我们研究了长期和广泛使用酷刑对社会的影响，促进其使用，通过绘制和分析安全机构和公民基础设施之间的接口，使这种部署酷刑。我们这样做的重点是医疗保健系统。医疗保健不仅最直接地牵涉到维持酷刑;作为一个以护理伦理为基础的制度，它与酷刑暴力的趋同是最引人注目的。然而，与迄今为止的大多数文献不同，我们的研究并不关注医学界的道德准则，因为这些准则在这种趋同中受到损害，侵蚀或违反。相反，我们研究道德是如何制度化和操作化的一套做法和程序，用于减轻和调解之间的不协调的酷刑和医疗护理的做法的理由。广泛的档案研究，加上访谈，将使我们能够重建酷刑的基础设施，影响和理由。我们的研究是基于这个研究小组被授予PCATI档案的独家访问权。PCATI档案提供了一个丰富和非常有价值的数据来源，记录了以色列安全机构实施的酷刑做法。最重要的是，该档案包括5 500多名巴勒斯坦酷刑受害者提供的证词。这些证词都是在律师的陪同下进行的，通常是在审讯结束后不久，受害者仍被监禁时进行的。这些证词的性质，以及其纯粹的数量，本身就是一个宝贵的知识财富，其学术意义不能被夸大。档案还包括数万份文件，从医疗记录和社会工作者报告到对呼吁的官方回应和与政府办公室的信件。这些文件合在一起，使人们能够直接获得关于酷刑做法的第一手资料。因此，允许查阅反对酷刑委员会的档案为调查有系统地使用酷刑提供了一个独特的机会。该项目将包括档案的处理（数字化、合理化、数据库建设），以及对其数据进行密切和详细的调查，以揭露迄今为止仍然隐藏的酷刑方面。

This is an impactful cross-disciplinary research into the use of torture as a political technology. It will be conducted in collaboration with an international civil society organization (the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel - PCATI), and with two universities in the UK (SOAS and QUB). Events of the last two decades show that torture cannot be regarded as a relic of the past, underscoring the importance of investigating its operation and internal logics. We do so focusing on Israel as a case-study. In common with other colonial and post-colonial regimes, Israel uses torture not as the rare exception, but systematically. Independent human rights experts estimate that approximately 50% of Palestinians have been exposed to torture by Israeli security agencies, either directly or indirectly. Israel therefore provides a paradigmatic case study for investigating the effects of the widespread deployment of torture. Firstly, our research explores what the systematic application of torture aims to do to the communities thus targeted. Framing the deployment of torture as a political technology (Foucault 1975), we examine whether and how it seeks to shape subjects, communal ties, and political relations. We therefore examine torture as a phenomenon that extends beyond the exertion of brute violence, and should rather be considered as a colonial technology of population control. Second, we examine the effects of the prolonged and widespread use of torture on the society which facilitates its use, by mapping and analysing the interfaces between the security apparatuses and civic infrastructures that enable this deployment of torture. We do so with a particular focus on the healthcare system. Healthcare is not only most directly implicated in sustaining torture; as a system predicated on the ethics of care, its convergence with the violence of torture is most striking. However, unlike most literature to date, our research does not focus on the ethical codes of the medical profession as a normative set of principles that are being compromised, eroded, or violated in this convergence (see Research Context). Rather, we examine how ethics is institutionalised and operationalised as a set of practices and procedures used to mitigate and mediate the incongruity between the rationales of torture and medical practices of care. Extensive archival research, coupled with interviews, will enable us to reconstruct the infrastructures, effects and rationales of torture. Our research is based on the exclusive access this research team has been granted to the archive of PCATI. The PCATI archive provides a rich and highly valuable source of data documenting torture practices implemented by Israeli security agencies. Most significantly, the archive includes depositions provided by more than 5,500 Palestinian victims of torture. These depositions were all conducted with lawyers, usually shortly after the conclusion of the interrogations and while the victim was still incarcerated. The nature of these depositions, as well as their sheer volume, is, in and of itself, an invaluable wealth of knowledge whose scholarly significance cannot be overstated. The archive further includes tens of thousands of documents, ranging from medical records and social worker reports to official responses to appeals and correspondence with government offices. Together, these afford direct access to first-hand accounts of the practice of torture. The access granted to the PCATI archive therefore presents a unique opportunity for investigating the systematic use of torture. The project will consist of the processing (digitisation, rationalisation, database construction) of the archive, and a close and detailed investigation into its data to expose facets of torture which thus far have remained hidden.