*Torture rests on a seedbed of ritualisation.
We can ritualise cruel behaviour and violence and we can ritualise compassion and love. Ultimately the choice is ours.
The bid for absolute power on the part of the ''Modern State," is enhanced by the open secrecy of torture. In order to remain at the edge of the law, and to continue to create and negotiate it's power the ritualistaion of violence that is torture must be hidden from plain view while at the same time this must be broadcasted to the public so that they know of it and be shocked and awed.
Torture exerts a claim not only over its victims bodies, but also their minds and emotions. It is a means of shaping body,mind and emotion into alignment with a certain image of the state.
To study torture as ritual undercuts any view of torture as merely or even primarily a technique of interrogation. It brings us to view torture as a means of social control transgressing the rule of law.
Torture is revealed as a threat to all freedoms and to the health of the human heart and soul. Concerted opposition to torture becomes both possible and necessary.
To fight against state torture and torture states means to abandon a sometimes far too convenient state imagination - the illusion of an almighty state, able and obliged to protect us from every imaginable threat, including terrorism,but there cannot ever be absolute security. There can be no doubt relative degrees of safety, but torture does not enhance security. It merely helps us to believe in the illusion of a State that can save us from imaginary ticking bombs.
To become cruel and inhumane is a price to high to pay for an illusion!
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