[A] clear sign of progress in Western society is that one does not need to argue against rape: it is “dogmatically” clear to everyone that rape is wrong. If someone were to advocate the legitimacy of rape, he would appear so ridiculous as to disqualify himself from any further consideration. And the same should hold for torture. NYT l To the Editor
March 24, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Knight of the Living Dead
By SLAVOJ ZIZEK
London
SINCE the release of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s dramatic confessions, moral outrage at the extent of his crimes has been mixed with doubts. Can his claims be trusted? What if he confessed to more than he really did, either because of a vain desire to be remembered as the big terrorist mastermind, or because he was ready to confess anything in order to stop the water boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques”?
If there was one surprising aspect to this situation it has less to do with the confessions themselves than with the fact that for the first time in a great many years, torture was normalized — presented as something acceptable. The ethical consequences of it should worry us all.
While the scope of Mr. Mohammed’s crimes is clear and horrifying, it is worth noting that the United States seems incapable of treating him even as it would the hardest criminal — in the civilized Western world, even the most depraved child murderer gets judged and punished. But any legal trial and punishment of Mr. Mohammed is now impossible — no court that operates within the frames of Western legal systems can deal with illegal detentions, confessions obtained by torture and the like. (And this conforms, perversely, to Mr. Mohammed’s desire to be treated as an enemy rather than a criminal.)
It is as if not only the terrorists themselves, but also the fight against them, now has to proceed in a gray zone of legality. We thus have de facto “legal” and “illegal” criminals: those who are to be treated with legal procedures (using lawyers and the like), and those who are outside legality, subject to military tribunals or seemingly endless incarceration.
Mr. Mohammed has become what the Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls “homo sacer”: a creature legally dead while biologically still alive. And he’s not the only one living in an in-between world. The American authorities who deal with detainees have become a sort of counterpart to homo sacer: acting as a legal power, they operate in an empty space that is sustained by the law and yet not regulated by the rule of law.
Some don’t find this troubling. The realistic counterargument goes: The war on terrorism is dirty, one is put in situations where the lives of thousands may depend on information we can get from our prisoners, and one must take extreme steps. As Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School puts it: “I’m not in favor of torture, but if you’re going to have it, it should damn well have court approval.” Well, if this is “honesty,” I think I’ll stick with hypocrisy.
Yes, most of us can imagine a singular situation in which we might resort to torture — to save a loved one from immediate, unspeakable harm perhaps. I can. In such a case, however, it is crucial that I do not elevate this desperate choice into a universal principle. In the unavoidable brutal urgency of the moment, I should simply do it. But it cannot become an acceptable standard; I must retain the proper sense of the horror of what I did. And when torture becomes just another in the list of counterterrorism techniques, all sense of horror is lost.
When, in the fifth season of the TV show “24,” it became clear that the mastermind behind the terrorist plot was none other than the president himself, many of us were eagerly waiting to see whether Jack Bauer would apply to the “leader of the free world” his standard technique in dealing with terrorists who do not want to divulge a secret that may save thousands. Will he torture the president?
Reality has now surpassed TV. What “24” still had the decency to present as Jack Bauer’s disturbing and desperate choice is now rendered business as usual.
In a way, those who refuse to advocate torture outright but still accept it as a legitimate topic of debate are more dangerous than those who explicitly endorse it. Morality is never just a matter of individual conscience. It thrives only if it is sustained by what Hegel called “objective spirit,” the set of unwritten rules that form the background of every individual’s activity, telling us what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.
For example, a clear sign of progress in Western society is that one does not need to argue against rape: it is “dogmatically” clear to everyone that rape is wrong. If someone were to advocate the legitimacy of rape, he would appear so ridiculous as to disqualify himself from any further consideration. And the same should hold for torture.
Are we aware what lies at the end of the road opened up by the normalization of torture? A significant detail of Mr. Mohammed’s confession gives a hint. It was reported that the interrogators submitted to waterboarding and were able to endure it for less than 15 seconds on average before being ready to confess anything and everything. Mr. Mohammed, however, gained their grudging admiration by enduring it for two and a half minutes.
Are we aware that the last time such things were part of public discourse was back in the late Middle Ages, when torture was still a public spectacle, an honorable way to test a captured enemy who might gain the admiration of the crowd if he bore the pain with dignity? Do we really want to return to this kind of primitive warrior ethics?
This is why, in the end, the greatest victims of torture-as-usual are the rest of us, the informed public. A precious part of our collective identity has been irretrievably lost. We are in the middle of a process of moral corruption: those in power are literally trying to break a part of our ethical backbone, to dampen and undo what is arguably our civilization’s greatest achievement, the growth of our spontaneous moral sensitivity.
Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, is the author, most recently, of “The Parallax View.”
5 Comments
yeah... "arguably our civilization's greatest achievement..." I wonder whom he means to include in "our" civilization... This column is a great exercise in Western constructionism.
This "civilization's" sense of propriety and morality also comes in parallel to forging a contrasting idea of civilization... that of the barbarians. I guess I just don't get what he is trying to argue here... That in the end we are the "greatest vicitims"? Yeah right! I am sure that any "detainee" would rather trade places with me any day! Is this what New York Times readers really need as a wake up call? To gain a political awareness by feeling victimized given their loss of a moral backbone? Holy shit. I think we are worse off than we thought!
This is the argument. That in the unchallenged and abstract we can hold certain values and feel as though we are moral beings. however, when those values are tested and we for whatever reason fail to reinforce our abstract virtue, we undermine our ideas of justice,freedom,compassion and therefore surrender our moral high ground.
However, in the abstract one may argue that yes torture is immoral and i am against it, but when given reality the value system may change quickly. and yes we are worse off than we thought.
i really think you're reading into this way too much javier.
Sorry to poke at your sacred cow, John! But what part of "the greatest victims of torture-as-usual are the rest of us, the informed public" shows any compassion to the real victims of torture? He seems to say..."'They' are the ones being tortured, but 'we' (we Westerners, we the New York Times haute bourgeoise) are the ones truly suffering!" WTF
you got me there (but he is one of many)...but i'm certain you were saving that line till i enter this fray. i do think you really miss the point here. the background implied here is that "we" have always tortured people, and zizek in other essays wholly acknowledges this. the really question is not the circumstances of today, but the institutions and relationships that western society has struggle to obtain through it's own fight for the "moral high-ground" or whatever. the point isn't an apples-to-apples comparison as you want to portrait it but rather something greater is at stake--the very fabric of our historic rights which far to many people have died to demarcate and preserve! the question isn't that they are torturing, but why are they telling us it is necessary to do so...without perverting zizek's position further i would recommend you listen to this lecture....
http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/media/zizek.shtml
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