THE ROLE OF TORTURE IN THE NEOLIBERAL PUNITIVE REGIME Ignacio Mendiola Sociology Department University of the Basque Country

1.- Introduction Analyze the relationship between torture and power (vs. extraordinary) Structure of visibility (vs. opacity of (some) punitive practices) The social production of torture (vs. the role of torturer)

2.- Modernity and violence Relationships of power and violence (Foucault) Direct, structural, symbolic and everyday violences (Bourgois) Biopolitical ontology of habitability Habit, habitat and inhabitant Violences on body (torture) Violences on space (political ecology) Violences on movement (regimes of mobility)

2.- Modernity and violence Capture of spaces: (neo)liberal, neo(coloniality), security Capture of bodies: Production Sexuality Sovereign power, discipline and control The violence of the capture: Produce other habits Produce human waste

3.- The practice of torture: inhabitant without habits and habitats The most radical negation of life in life: to inhabit the uninhabitable Torture and body: Animalization of life (Bios – Zoe) Pleasure and suffering (Nietzsche) Torture and language: Ticking bomb scenario (pedagogy of torture) Silence, cry, guilt

4.- The punitive-political practice of torture Torturability: from Greek slave to criminal law of the enemy (Jakobs) Law and torture: ambiguity and lack of relevance (role of committees)

United Nations Convention against Torture (1984) Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. Article 1.1

4.- The punitive-political practice of torture Exceptionality as a political dispositive: spectral sovereignty (Butler) Production of law under exceptionality-security Production of narratives about threat/fear To make a decision about exceptionality (arbitrariness) To act in the scope of exceptionality (impunity) Capture of subjectivities: Political dimension (security): Otherness of threat: (suspect of) terrorist, political dissidence Economic dimension (neoliberalism): Otherness of exclusion: prisoners, migrants, minors

5.- Geography of torture Civilization of war (dal Lago): War on terror (secret detentions, extraordinary renditions, prisons…) Domestic terrorism (isolation) (Post)disciplinary societies (Wacquant): Prisions (habitability, long solitary confinement) Immigrant Internment Centers Detention centers / therapeutic Centers for minors