Torture and the Twilight of Empire by Marnia Lazreg

Author:Marnia Lazreg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART III

IDEOLOGY OF TORTURE

Chapter 7

CONSCIENCE, IMPERIAL IDENTITY, AND TORTURE

To lose an empire is to lose one’s self.

—General Raoul Salan, Mémoires

MANAGEMENT OF conscience was essential to the troops’ tolerance of torture and to related acts of terror. The modality of conscience management was a function of the degree to which an imperial identity was assumed or questioned. Psychological action targeting troops could not alone account for diffuse tolerance. Clearly, not all soldiers in the French army were torturers. That torture presented some of them with a crise de conscience cannot be overlooked. Many, who felt shock and revulsion at the sight of torture, recorded it in their diaries or took pictures to preserve its memory. Even though the military code of silence smothered stirrings of conscience, there were men, such as General de Bollardière, who spoke out against torture. However, there was no shortage of soldiers who committed it, including many conscripts (frequently seen as innocent)1 as well as enlisted men. Diaries, confessions, and other war narratives reveal a plasticity of conscience in their authors that requires elucidation. Consciousness of wrongdoing coexisted well with the commission or quiescent observation of acts of terror. Admittedly, wars are not fought according to what conscience dictates, but to what strategy requires. And despite the hue and cry about them, torture and terror continued until the end of the war. Using retrospective narratives of the war, this chapter seeks to understand the role played by imperial identity, real or imagined, in the management of conscience in relation to torture and the war, as individuals assessed their past actions and attitudes.

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