New Book Argues that Opposing Torture Still Matters

Dr. Rebecca Gordon to speak on her new book, Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States, on Tuesday, September 2, 2014, at 7:00 PM  at the Walpole Public Library, 143 School St. The talk is sponsored by the Walpole Peace and Justice Group. In her book Dr. Gordon argues that most perspectives on torture miss the point, by treating torture as a series of isolated actions that arise in extreme times of war and crisis. But institutionalized state torture is actually an ongoing, socially embedded practice.

The use of torture by the United States as part of the “war on terror” cannot be separated from a national history that includes state support for torture regimes abroad — as well the ongoing use of torture in U.S. jails and prisons. Torture still matters, because the United States is still torturing.

Mainstreaming Torture highlights the impact of the practice of torture not only on the persons most closely involved, but on an entire nation that accepts torture as a necessary price to pay for personal safety. 

Praise for Mainstreaming Torture

“This remarkable morally and politically challenging and courageous work confronts unblinkingly the profoundly disturbing truth that both popular and scholarly discourses in America consistently distort and sanitize the essential nature of the torture that has become a socially embedded practice in our country.”
— Henry Shue, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford

“This excellent book challenges us to end torture. Not only by prosecuting the front line people who get caught, but also going after the high-ranking public officials who are torture’s intellectual authors.”
— Bill Quigley, Professor of Law, Loyola University New Orleans

Rebecca Gordon teaches philosophy at the University of San Francisco, and works with War Times/Tiempo de Guerras.