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The Human Rights Torture Novel
Author(s) -
Nayar Pramod K.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12133
Subject(s) - torture , dehumanization , human rights , state (computer science) , citizenship , oppression , sociology , precarity , harm , articulation (sociology) , political science , criminology , law , gender studies , computer science , algorithm , politics
This essay examines a subgenre of the Human Rights novel, the torture novel, devoted to the social ontology of the human. In the HR torture novel embodiment is rendered ‘abject’ and the subject ‘unmade’, through dehumanization and debasement. The abject embodiment is the consequence of institutional precarity and collapsing social apparatuses. Tortured subjects acquire membership of a collective memory of pain, a trauma‐memory citizenship, made possible through the articulation of memories of torture, bringing together fellow sufferers, former perpetrators and witnesses.The essay concludes that the torture novel is integral to the project of Human Rights because it demonstrates how broken bodies are produced in eroding social conditions, driven by state policy, state indifference or state oppression.[Note 1. This essay is for K. Narayana Chandran. ...]