Abolition Democracy by Angela Y. Davis

Author:Angela Y. Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2010-08-15T16:00:00+00:00

Abolition Democracy

Despite the fact that we are legally bound by national and international law not to torture, what the mainstream media seems focused upon debating is whether and when to use torture, as if both national and international law could be suspended if the authorities deem it necessary. How does allowing the public discussion about torture to go on like this entail an attack on the moral integrity of citizens and democracy? Does democracy have anything to do with morality?

The public discussion of torture has been limited by the widespread conviction that democracy is quintessentially American and that any strategy designed to protect or defend the American version of democracy is legitimate. A further problem with this discussion is that the American version of democracy has become increasingly synonymous with capitalism, and capitalism has become progressively more defined by its ability to roam the globe. This is what has framed the conversation about torture and has allowed moral dilemmas about torture to be expressed alongside the notion that permissible forms of violence are necessary if American democracy is to be preserved, both in the U.S. and abroad. In the final analysis, these moral positions against torture do not have the power to challenge American exceptionalism. This unquestioned rift between moral opposition to particular tactics and what is considered to be an imperative to save the nation has enabled a torrent of obfuscating discourse on terrorism on the one hand, and the practice of torture on the other.

Of course, it is important to vigorously object to torture as a technique of control that militates against the ideals and promise of U.S. democracy. But when U.S. democracy becomes the barometer by which any and all political conduct is judged, it is not difficult to transform specific acts of torture into conduct that is tolerable, conduct that does not necessarily violate the community’s moral integrity.

There are myriad examples of the inability of morality to transform the sphere of politics. When torture is inflicted on human beings that are marked as racially and culturally inferior—as people from Iraq are—it is not difficult to shift conversations about torture to a more general register, thus ignoring the damage it does to particular individuals.

I am very suspicious of the discourse that implies that torture is more damaging to its perpetrators than to its victims. Yes, it is certainly true that the revelations regarding the brutal techniques of interrogation at Guantánamo and the acts of physical violence and sexual coercion at Abu Ghraib raise significant questions about this society, its government, its military, and its incarceration practices. But when this eclipses the profound suffering of the men and women who have been tortured, it reveals the extent to which the reverberations of morality can support the very racism that enabled the torture in the first place. Thus, it is important not to take for granted that resistance to U.S. torture always implies solidarity with the victims. At the same time that we question the government and military for

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