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diff --git a/books/philosophy/torture-and-truth.md b/books/philosophy/torture-and-truth.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4dcb3a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/philosophy/torture-and-truth.md @@ -0,0 +1,956 @@ +[[!meta title="Torture and Truth"]] + +* [Torture and Truth](https://www.worldcat.org/title/torture-and-truth/oclc/20823386). +* By Page duBois. + +## About + + First published in 1991, this book — through the examination of ancient + Greek literary, philosophical and legal texts — analyses how the Athenian + torture of slaves emerged from and reinforced the concept of truth as something + hidden in the human body. It discusses the tradition of understanding truth as + something that is generally concealed and the ideas of ‘secret space’ in both + the female body and the Greek temple. This philosophy and practice is related + to Greek views of the ‘Other’ (women and outsiders) and considers the role of + torture in distinguishing slave and free in ancient Athens. A wide range of + perspectives — from Plato to Sartre — are employed to examine the subject. + +## Topics + +* Example of actual tortures that took place: see defense of Andokides. Footnote 6. + +## Excerpts + +### Machine atroci + + Inside sat other devices. The iron maiden of Frankfurt, a + larger-than-life-size female body, cast in iron, strangely reminiscent of one + of those Russian dolls, a rounded maternal peasant body that opens horizontally + to reveal another identical doll inside, that opens again and again until one + reaches a baby, perhaps, I can’t recall, in its deepest inside. This body, + propped open, had been cast with a vertical split, its interior consisting of + two sets of sharp iron spikes that, when the maiden was closed on a captive + human body, penetrated that body, trapping it upright as it killed in a + grotesque parody of pregnancy made a coffin. + + [...] + + For me, the pear was not the most compelling “machine” on display. There + sat, on one of the tables inside the Quirinale Palace, a simple modern device, + looking something like a microphone, with electrodes dangling from it. The + catalogue acknowledged that critics had objected to the inclusion of this + instrument in the exhibit. + + [...] + + As I recognized what it must be, pieced together an idea of its functions from + recently read accounts of refugees from the Argentinian junta and from Central + America, recalled films of the Algerian war, news stories of the reign of the + colonels in Greece, this instrument composed of the only too familiar elements + of modern technology defamiliarized the devices on exhibit; removing them from + the universe of the museum, it identified them with the calculated infliction + of human agony. It recontextualized all the other objects, prevented them from + being an aesthetic series, snatched them from the realm of the commodified + antique, recalled suffering. + + The ancient Greeks and Romans routinely tortured slaves as part of their legal + systems. So what? Is the recollection of this fact merely a curiosity, a memory + of the “antique” which allows us to marvel at our progress from the past of + Western culture, our abolition of slavery? Some of us congratulate ourselves on + our evolution from a barbaric pagan past, from the world of slave galleys and + crucifixions, of vomitoria and gladiatorial contests, of pederasty and + polytheism. But there is another, supplementary or contestatory narrative told + about ancient Greek culture—a narrative about the noble origins of Western + civilization. This narrative has analogies with the Quirinale exhibit—it + represents the past as a set of detached objects, redolent with antique + atmosphere. This alternate and prejudicially selective gaze at the high culture + of antiquity, the achievement of those ancient Greeks and Romans to whom we + point when we discuss our golden age, produces an ideological text for the + whole world now, mythologies about democracy versus communist totalitarianism, + about progress, civilized values, human rights. Because we are descended from + this noble ancient culture, from the inventors of philosophy and democracy, we + see ourselves as privileged, as nobly obliged to guide the whole benighted + world toward Western culture’s version of democracy and enlightenment. But even + as we gaze at high culture, at its origins in antiquity, at its present + manifestations in the developed nations, the “base” practices of torturers + throughout the world, many of them trained by North Americans, support this + narrative by forcing it on others, by making it the hegemonic discourse about + history. So-called high culture—philosophical, forensic, civic discourses and + practices—is of a piece from the very beginning, from classical antiquity, with + the deliberate infliction of human suffering. It is my argument in this book + that more is at stake in our recognition of this history than antiquarianism, + than complacency about our advances from barbarism to civilization. That truth + is unitary, that truth may finally be extracted by torture, is part of our + legacy from the Greeks and, therefore, part of our idea of “truth.” + +### Sartre + + "Torture is senseless violence, born in fear. The purpose of it is to force + from one tongue, amid its screams and its vomiting up of blood, the secret of + everything. Senseless violence: whether the victim talks or whether he dies + under his agony, the secret that he cannot tell is always somewhere else and + out of reach. It is the executioner who becomes Sisyphus. If he puts the + question at all, he will have to continue forever." + +### Tradition, secrets, truth and torture + + The Gestapo taught the French, who taught the Americans in Indo-China, and + they passed on some of their expertise to the Argentinian, Chilean, El + Salvadoran torturers. But this essay is not meant to be a genealogy of modern + torture. Rather I am concerned with what Sartre calls “the secret of + everything” with the relationship between torture and the truth, which “is + always somewhere else and out of reach.” + +A crucial point (an "crucial" also in the sense of the crucified, tortured body): + + I want to show how the logic of our philosophical tradition, of some of our + inherited beliefs about truth, leads almost inevitably to conceiving of the + body of the other as the site from which truth can be produced, and to using + violence if necessary to extract that truth. + + [...] + + I want to work out how the Greek philosophical idea of truth was produced + in history and what role the social practice of judicial torture played in its + production. + + I don’t want to suggest that the ancient Greeks invented torture, or that it + belongs exclusively to the Western philosophical tradition, or that abhorrence + of torture is not also part of that tradition. But I also refuse to adopt the + moral stance of those who pretend that torture is the work of “others,” that it + belongs to the third world, that we can condemn it from afar. To stand thus is + to eradicate history, to participate both in the exportation of torture as a + product of Western civilization, and in the concealment of its ancient and + perhaps necessary coexistence with much that we hold dear. The very idea of + truth we receive from the Greeks, those ancestors whom Allan Bloom names for + us,3 is inextricably linked with the practice of torture, which has almost + always been the ultimate attempt to discover a secret “always out of reach.” + + [...] + + The ancient Greek word for torture is basanos. It means first of all the + touchstone used to test gold for purity; the Greeks extended its meaning to + denote a test or trial to determine whether something or someone is real or + genuine. It then comes to mean also inquiry by torture, “the question,” + torture.4 In the following pages I will discuss the semantic field of the word + basanos, its uses in various contexts, both literal and metaphorical. [...] + This analysis will lead me to consideration of the idea of truth as secret in + ancient Greek thought, in literary, ritual, and philosophical practices + + [...] + + The desire for a reliable test to determine the fidelity of a suspect + intimate recurs in Greek poetry, and later poets often employ the metaphor of + the testing of metal to describe the necessity and unreliability of testing for + the fidelity of friends. + + The Lydians of Asia Minor had invented the use of metal currency, of money, in + the seventh century B.C.E. The polis or city-state of Aegina was reputed to be + the first Greek city to establish a silver coinage; in the classical period + several different coinages circulated. By the fifth century B.C.E. coins of + small enough denominations existed to enter into the economic transactions of + daily life. In Euripides’ Hippolytus the Athenian king Theseus, bewildered by + contradictory accounts of an alleged seduction attempt by his son against his + wife, uses monetary language to convey his confusion about the mysteries of + domestic intimacy: + + [...] + + Theseus employs the language of the banker, of the money-lender, to suggest + that one of his friends, that is, of those dear to him, either his son or his + wife, is false and counterfeit. + + [...] + + pollution is a religious term, connected with the impurity of blood shed, + of unclean sacrificial practices or murder.10 + In the archaic period, the state of freedom from pollution is sometimes + connected with notions of inherited purity, of uncontaminated descent from the + generations of heroes, from the gods, ideas of inherited excellence through + which the aristocrats justified their dominance in the archaic cities. + +### Governing, the steering of a ship in the hands of the aristocracy + + The very last lines of the poem echo the concerns of Theognis, a recognition of + the political disturbances of the ancient city, and the desire of the + aristocratic poet for a steady hand, sanctioned by blood and tradition, at the + city’s helm: + + Let us praise + his brave brothers too, because + they bear on high the ways of Thessaly + and bring them glory. + In their hands + belongs the piloting of cities, their fathers’ heritage. + (68-72) [poet Pindar, in Pythian 10] + + This last phrase might be rendered: “in the care of the good men [Theognis’s + agathoi, a political term] lie the inherited, paternal pilotings, governings + [following the metaphor of the ship of state] of cities.” The city is a ship + that must be guided by those who are capable by birth of piloting it, that is + to say, the agathoi, the good, the aristocrats. The basanos reveals the good, + separates base metal from pure gold, aristocrat from commoner. + +### A change of meaning + + The Sophoclean language, and its ambiguity, reveal the gradual transition of + the meaning of the word basanos from “test” to “torture.” The literal meaning, + “touchstone,” gives way to a figurative meaning, “test,” then over time changes + to “torture,” as the analogy is extended to the testing of human bodies in + juridical procedures for the Athenian courts. Is the history of basanos itself + in ancient Athens a process of refiguration, the alienation of the test from a + metal to the slave, the other? Such a transfer is literally catachresis, the + improper use of words, the application of a term to a thing which it does not + properly denote, abuse or perversion of a trope or metaphor (OED); George + Puttenham, the Elizabethan rhetorician, calls catachresis “the figure of + abuse.” The modern English word touchstone is similarly employed by people who + have no idea of the archaic reference to the lapis Lydius, also called in + English basanite . The figurative use of the word touchstone has taken the + place of the literal meaning. + + [...] + + The forensic language of Oedipus Rex fuses heroic legend with the poetic + representation of the city’s institutions. The mythic narrative of Oedipus’s + encounter with the Sphinx, set in the most remote past, and the struggle + between Kreon and Oedipus over the investigation of an ancient and mythic + homicide, here meet the daily life of the democratic polis. The language of + Sophokles’ tragedy might be said to exemplify not only the contradictions + between the tyranny of the fictional past and the “secret ballots,” alluded to + disparagingly by Pindar, of the audience’s present, but also to represent + dramatically, in an almost Utopian manner, a synthesis of the Greeks’ legendary + origins and their political processes. The chorus’s attempt to judge Oedipus + resembles the aristocratic reveler’s testing of his fellow symposiasts, using + as it does archaic, lyric language; it is also like the democratic jury’s + testing of a citizen on trial, alluding obliquely at the same time to the + juridical torture of slaves in the Athenian legal system, a process which by + this time was referred to as the basanos. + + Some of the semantic processes that transformed basanos as touchstone into the + term for legal torture can be seen in the use of the term in the Oedipus + Coloneus. This tragedy is only obliquely concerned with the process of + democracy, with the new institutions of the mid-fifth century which mediated + between the city’s aristocratic past and its democratic present. It speaks + instead of the exhaustion of the political, of disillusionment with parties and + with war, of metaphysical solutions to problems too bitter to be resolved in + mortal agones. + + [...] + + The basanos, no longer an autonomous, inert, inanimate tool for assaying + metal, has become a struggle between two forces, a contest that assumes + physical violence, a reconcretizing of the “touchstone,” which is neither the + literal stone nor a metaphorical ordeal. Hands, pitted one against the other, + rematerialize the test. The touchstone sets stone against metal; the test of + friends sets one against another; here the agon, the contest implicit in the + notion of basanos, takes on a new connotation, one of combat between enemies. + + Some historians of the ancient city believe that the word basanos refers not to + physical torture, but to a legal interrogation that does not involve violence. + Others claim that the threat of torture may have been present in the word, but + that there is no evidence that torture was actually ever practiced.16 It seems + to me very unlikely , even though the ancient evidence does not describe + directly any single case of torture, that the frequent mentions of basanos in + contexts of physical intimidation can refer to anything but the practice of + torture. The accidents of survival of ancient material may mean that we have no + single documented instance of torture having been applied, but the many uses of + the term, not only in the context of the law court, suggest a cultural + acceptance of the meaning “torture” for basanos, and an assumption that torture + occurred. For example, the historian Herodotos, in recounting an incident that + took place during the Persian Wars, in the early years of the fifth century + B.C.E., describes the Athenian hero Themistokles’ secret negotiations with the + Persian emperor Xerxes after the battle of Salamis: + + Themistocles lost no time in getting a message through to Xerxes. The men he + chose for this purpose were all people he could trust to keep his instructions + secret [sigan], even under torture [es pasan basanon]. + + [...] + + This passage suggests not only that basanos was not merely interrogation, but + that with the meaning torture it formed part of the vocabulary of daily life, + and that torture figured in the relations between ancient states as well as in + the legal processes of the democratic city. Themistokles had to take into + account the ability of his emissaries to resist physical torture, pasan + basanon, “any, all torture,” when deciding whom to send to the Persian emperor. + He required silence under extreme interrogation, since he was claiming falsely + to have protected Xerxes from the pursuit of the Greeks after the Persians’ + defeat. And Herodotos uses the word basanos as if the meaning “torture” were + common currency. + + As do Sophokles’ Oedipus plays, Herodotos’s text offers a double vision, + providing further evidence about the place of torture in the democracy and in + its prehis-tory. Sophokles writes from within the democracy about episodes from + the archaic, legendary past of the city. Herodotos writes from the world of the + mid-fifth century, the time of Sophokles and the great imperial age of Athens, + looking back half a century. The victories of Athens in the Persian Wars had + enabled and produced the great flowering of Athenian culture and ambition in + the middle of the fifth century. Herodotos’s retrospective gaze at the origins + of the democracy and its empire paints the portrait of Themistokles, one of the + great aristocrats whose power and vision shaped the evolution of the democratic + city. His encouragement, for example, of the policy of spending the city’s + mining wealth on its fleet, rather than distributing of monies to the citizens, + meant that the poorest citizens in Athens, who manned the fleet, participated + actively and powerfully in the political and military decisions of the + following years. In the incident Herodotos describes, Themistokles takes care + to ensure that his self-interested machinations not be known by the Athenians + he led. Themistokles, like Oedipus, has become a creature of legend. + + [...] + + Silence under torture may be coded as an aristocratic virtue. [...] it + indicates the degree to which silence under pain is ideologically associated + with nobility. The slave has no resources through which to resist submitting to + pain and telling all. In contrast the aristocratic soldier, noble by both birth + and training, maintains laconic silence in the face of physical abuse. + +### Comedy and inversion + + We find a comic parody of the use of basanos for the courtroom in Aristophanes’ + Frogs.20 The comedy is devoted to themes of judgment, discrimination, and + evaluation . Dionysos and his slave Xanthias have set off on a journey to Hades + to retrieve the tragic poet Euripides, but end by choosing Aeschylus to bring + back with them, claiming him over Euripides as the superior poet. Dionysos had + dressed for the trip as Herakles, who had once successfully entered and, more + importantly, departed the realm of the dead, but when he learns that Herakles + is persona non grata in Hades, he forces his slave to trade costumes with him. + When Xanthias is mistaken for Herakles and about to be arrested as a + dog-napper, for the stealing of Kerberos, the slave offers to give up his own + supposed slave, really the god Dionysos, to torture + + [...] + + The result is a beating contest in which Xanthias seems sure to win, accustomed + as he, a real slave, is to such beatings. The beatings constitute not + punishment but torture, and the language of the comedy reflects this fact. The + torture will reveal the truth, show which of the two is a god, which a slave. + The comedy works on the reversal of slave and god; Xanthias claims a god would + not be hurt by a beating, but the slave, the lowest of mortal beings, might in + fact be thought, because of experience, most easily to endure a whipping. + Dionysos begins to weep under the beating, but claims it’s due to onions. + Aiakos is finally unable to decide which of the two is divine. + + In the parabasis, the address to the audience, that follows, the theme of noble + and base currency emerges once again, as if connected by free association with + this scene of torture, of the basanos or touchstone. The chorus appeals to the + Athenian populace, complaining that Athenians who had committed one fault in a + battle at sea were to be put to death, while slaves who had fought alongside + their masters had been given their freedom. This seems to the chorus to be a + perversion of traditional hierarchical thinking: + + [...] + + The comic beating is quite hilarious, of course. But it does not put into + question the reality of torture. The exchange has a carnival quality, Dionysos + masquerading as slave, slave masquerading as Dionysos masquerading as Herakles, + the god beaten like a common slave. The slave remains uppity and insolent, the + god cowardly and ridiculous. Comedy permits this representation of the + quotidian reality of the polis, the exposure of what cannot be alluded to + directly in tragedy, the violence and domination implicit in the situation of + bondage. Comedy allows the fictional depiction of the unspeakable, the + representation of the lowly slave, the allusion to ordinary cruelty, a + commentary on the difficulty of perceiving the essential difference between + divine and enslaved beings. + [...] If Aristophanes is so iconoclastic as to mock the gods, and to treat + the slave as if he were a human character, he does not go so far as to question + the institution of the basanos. + +### Testing + + The slave on the rack waits like the metal, pure or alloyed, to be tested. + [...] The test assumes that its result will be truth; [...] The truth is + generated by torture from the speech of the slave; the sounds of the slave on + the rack must by definition contain truth, which the torture produces. And when + set against other testimony in a court case, that necessary truth, like a + touchstone itself, will show up the truth or falsity of the testimony. The + process of testing has been spun out from the simple metallurgist’s experiment, + to a new figuration of the work of interrogating matter. It is the slave’s + body, not metal, which receives the test; but how can that body be demonstrated + to be true or false, pure or alloyed, loyal or disloyal? The basanos assumes + first that the slave always lies, then that torture makes him or her always + tell the truth, then that the truth produced through torture will always expose + the truth or falsehood of the free man’s evidence. + +### Athenian democracy and torture + + Yet the Athenian democracy was at best a sort of oligarchy, one that denied + legal and political rights to all women, even daughters of citizens, and to + foreigners and slaves residing in Attica. The practice of slave torture is + consistent with the democracy’s policies of exclusion, scapegoating, ostracism, + and physical cruelty and violence; to overlook or justify torture is to + misrecognize and idealize the Athenian state. + + MacDowell describes the place of torture in the Athenian legal system: + + A special rule governed the testimony of slaves: they could not appear in + court, but a statement which a slave, male or female, had made under torture + (basanos) could be produced in court as evidence.3 + + The party in a trial who wished a slave to be tortured would put his questions + in writing, specifying which slaves he wished to have tortured and the + questions they were to be asked, and also agreeing to pay the slave’s owner for + any permanent damage inflicted on the slave. Athenian citizens could not be + tortured. + + MacDowell reasons as follows about the rule that slave’s testimony could + be received in the courtroom only if the slave had been tortured: + + The reason for this rule must have been that a slave who knew anything material + would frequently belong to one of the litigants, and so would be afraid to say + anything contrary to his owner’s interests, unless the pressure put on him to + reveal the truth was even greater than the punishment for revealing it which he + could expect from his master.4 + + A. R. W. Harrison believes that the right to testify freely in court may have + been seen as a privilege, perhaps because witnesses who appeared in court were + once thought of as “compurgators,” witnesses who swore to the credibility of a + party in a law suit. “Torture must therefore be applied to the slave as a mark + of the fact that he was not in himself a free agent entitled to support one + side or the other.”5 Since the slave was a valuable piece of property, liable + to damage from torture, she or he could not be tortured without permission of + the owner.6 If that permission were denied, the opponent often claimed that the + evidence which would have been obtained under torture would of certainty have + been damning to the slave’s owner. + +### Slavery and freedom + + Jean-Paul Sartre’s [...] says: “Algeria cannot contain two human species, but + requires a choice between them”.1 The soldiers who practiced torture on + Algerian revolutionaries attempted to reduce their opponents to pure + materiality, to the status of animals. + + [...] + + Free men and women could be enslaved at any time, although in Athens the + Solonian reforms of the sixth century B.C.E. + + [...] + + In the Politics Aristotle claims that some people are slaves “by nature” + + [...] + + The discourse on the use of torture in ancient Athenian law forms part of an + attempt to manage the opposition between slave and free, and it betrays both + need and anxiety: need to have a clear boundary between servile and free, + anxiety about the impossibility of maintaining this difference. + +### Tendency of suspend democracy protections (coup) during crisis + + [The] incident of the mutilation of the herms shook the stability of the + Athenian state, but also points to the future tendencies among the aristocratic + and oligarchic parties to suspend democratic protections in a moment of crisis. + The logical tendency would seem to be either to extend torture to all who could + give evidence, or to forbid torture of any human being. The instability of the + distinctions between slave and free, citizen and noncitizen, Greek and + foreigner, becomes apparent in these debates on the possibility of state + torture of citizens. Athenian citizens treasured the freedom from torture as a + privilege of their elevated status; Peisander’s eagerness to abrogate this + right is a premonition of the violence and illegality of the oligarchic coup of + 411 and of the bloody rule of the Thirty after the defeat of the Athenians by + the Spartans in 404.5 + +### Truth-making and the secret of everything + + Another kind of truth, what Sartre calls “the secret of everything,” is named + by many Greek writers as the explicit aim of judicial torture. [,,,] + In the Greek legal system, the torture of slaves figured as a guarantor of + truth, as a process of truth-making. + +### Secret ballots and lawyers + + Jurors received pay for their service in the courts [...] A case was required + to be completed within a day at most; several private cases would be tried + within a single day. The time alloted for arguments by the opponents in a trial + was measured by a water-clock; the amount of water allowed for each side was + determined by the seriousness of the charges. After each of the litigants + spoke, brought forward witnesses, and had evidence read, the jurors placed + disks or pebbles into urns to determine the winner of the suit. + [...] At the end of the fifth century it became customary to employ professional + writers to compose one’s speech for the court. + + Thus the scene in the court resembled the great assemblies of the democratic + city, with up to six thousand men adjudicating disputes. [...] + In this context, the evidence from the torture of slaves is evidence from + elsewhere, from another place, another body. It is evidence from outside the + community of citizens, of free men. Produced by the basanistês, the torturer, + or by the litigant in another scene, at the time of torture, such evidence + differs radically from the testimony of free witnesses in the court. It is + temporally estranged, institutionally, conventionally marked as evidence of + another order; what is curious is that speakers again and again privilege it as + belonging to a higher order of truth than that evidence freely offered in the + presence of the jurors by present witnesses. + + [...] + + There are many such passages. The slave body has become, in the democratic + city, the site of torture and of the production of truth. + + The argument concerning the greater value of slave evidence frequently occurs + in accusations against an opponent who has refused to allow his slaves to be + tortured. The speaker claims then that this failure to produce slave witnesses + proves indirectly that their testimony would condemn their owner. + +### Slaves are bodies; citizens possess logos + + Lykourgos argues against Leokrates [...]: + + Every one of you knows that in matters of dispute it is considered by far the + just and most democratic [dêmotikôtatori] course, when there are male or female + slaves, who possess the necessary information, to examine these by torture and + so have facts to go upon instead of hearsay, particularly when the case + concerns the public and is of vital interest to the state. + + He argues that by nature the tortured slaves would have told the truth; does + this mean that any human being, when tortured, will produce the truth, or that + it is the nature of slaves to tell the truth under torture? Free citizen men + will be deceived by clever arguments; slaves by nature will not be misled + because they think with their bodies. Slaves are bodies; citizens possess + logos, reason. [...] This appeal to the practice of torture as an integral + and valued part of the legal machinery of the democracy points up the + contradictory nature of Athenian democracy, and the ways in which the + application of the democratic reforms of Athens were carefully limited to the + lives of male citizens, and intrinsic to the production and justification of + this notion of male citizenship. + +### Notions of truth and the real of the untorturable, the dead + + In another speech attributed to Antiphon, this one part of a case presumably + actually tried, torture again plays an important role in the defense of a man + accused of murder, Euxitheos [...] + + Probably both of these considerations induced him to make the false charges + against me which he did; he hoped to gain his freedom, and his one immediate + wish was to end the torture. I need not remind you, I think, that witnesses + under torture are biased in favour of those who do most of the torturing; they + will say anything likely to gratify them. It is their one chance of salvation, + especially when the victims of their lies happen not to be present. Had I + myself proceeded to give orders that the slave should be racked [strebloun] for + not telling the truth, that step in itself would doubtless have been enough to + make him stop incriminating me falsely. (5.31-32) + + The speaker, because for once forced to confront the evidence of a tortured + slave, rather than bemoaning the lack of slave evidence, here points out the + absolute unreliability of slave evidence, based as it is on the will of the + torturer. Bizarrely, however, he ends by claiming that the true truth would + have emerged, another truth truer than the first, if he himself had been the + torturer. If so, it is interesting that the defendant distinguishes between + an essentialist notion of truth and a pragmatic notion of truth in the case of + the slave, but not in the case of the free foreigner, where a reversion to the + essentialist notion appears to occur. And the logic he exposes, that the slave + will say anything to gratify his torturer, is dropped as soon as he himself + becomes the torturer. We can imagine the body of the slave ripped apart in a + tug-of-war between two litigants, in a law case in which he was implicated only + by proximity. + + This very slave, who had been purchased by the prosecution, in fact later + changed his testimony, according to the speaker because he recognized his + imminent doom. Nonetheless the prosecution put him to death. The defendant + continues: + + Clearly, it was not his person, but his evidence, which they required; had the + man remained alive, he would have been tortured by me in the same way, and the + prosecution would be confronted with their plot: but once he was dead, not only + did the loss of his person mean that I was deprived of my opportunity of + establishing the truth, but his false statements are assumed to be true. + (5.35) + + All of the prosecution’s case rests on the testimony of the tortured and now + dead slave; the defendant claims to be completely frustrated, since now the + truth lies in a realm inaccessible to him. He cannot torture the dead man and + discover the “real” truth. Even though the slave had at first insisted on the + defendant’s innocence, he had under torture called him guilty: + + At the start, before being placed on the wheel [trokhon], in fact, until + extreme pressure was brought to bear, the man adhered to the truth [alêtheia] + and declared me innocent. It was only when on the wheel, and when driven to it, + that he falsely incriminated me, in order to put an end to the torture. + (5.40-41) + + The persistence of the defendant’s desire himself to torture this slave claims + our attention; even after the inevitability of false testimony under torture + stands exposed, he bemoans the retreat of the slave into the realm of the + untorturable, of the dead. + + I repeat, let no one cause you to forget that the prosecution put the informer + to death, that they used every effort to prevent his appearance in court and to + make it impossible for me to take him and examine him under torture on my + return.… Instead, they bought the slave and put him to death, entirely on their + own initiative [idia], (5.46-47) + +### Reasoning attributed to a free man, but foreigner + + The free man knew that the torture would end; he also could not be bribed by + promises of freedom for giving the answers the torturers desired to hear. In + this case, the defendant gives priority to the free man’s unfree testimony; + unlike the free testimony of an Athenian in a courtroom, this evidence was + derived from torture, but the defendant seeks to give it the added authority of + the free man in spite of its origin in this procedure tainted with unfreedom, + because it supports his view of the case. + +### Truth even if it cost lives + + You do not need to be reminded, gentlemen, that the one occasion when + compulsion [anagkai] is as absolute and as effective as is humanly possible, + and when the rights of a case are ascertained thereby most surely and most + certainly, arises when there is an abundance of witnesses, both slave and free, + and it is possible to put pressure [anagkazein] upon the free men by exacting + an oath or word of honour, the most solemn and the most awful form of + compulsion known to free men, and upon the slaves by other devices [heterais + anagkais], which will force them to tell the truth even if their revelations + are bound to cost them their lives, as the compulsion of the moment [he gar + parousa anagkê] has a stronger influence over each than the fate which he will + suffer by compulsion afterwards. (6.25) + + That is, the free man is compelled by oaths; he might lose his rights as a + citizen if he lied under oath. The slave, even though he will certainly be put + to death as a consequence of what he reveals under torture, will nonetheless, + under torture, reveal the truth. The two kinds of compulsion are equated, one + appropriate for the free man, one for the slave. + +### Torturability + + Torture serves not only to exact a truth, some truth or other, which will + benefit one side of the case or the other. It also functions as a gambit in the + exchange between defendant and prosecution; if for any reason one of them + refuses to give up slaves to torture, the other can claim that the missing + testimony would of a certainty support his view of things. And as I argued + earlier, torture also serves to mark the boundary between slave and free + beings. Torture can be enacted against free, non-Greek beings as well as + slaves; all “barbarians” are assimilated to slaves. Slaves are barbarians, + barbarians are slaves; all are susceptible to torture. Torturability creates a + difference which is naturalized. And even the sophistry of the First Tetralogy, + which wants to create a category of virtually free in the case of the slave who + would have been freed had he lived, seeks to support this division of human + beings into free, truth-telling creatures, and torturable slave/barbarians, who + will only produce truth on the wheel. + +### The Slave's Truth + + Torture performs at least two functions in the Athenian state. As an instrument + of demarcation, it delineates the boundary between slave and free, between the + untouchable bodies of free citizens and the torturable bodies of slaves. The + ambiguity of slave status, the difficulty of sustaining an absolute sense of + differences, is addressed through this practice of the state, which carves the + line between slave and free on the bodies of the unfree. In the work of the + wheel, the rack, and the whip, the torturer carries out the work of the polis; + citizen is made distinct from noncitizen, Greek from barbarian, slave from + free. The practice of basanos administers to the anxiety about enslavement, + hauntingly evoked in the texts of Athenian tragedy that recall the fall of + cities, particularly the fall of Troy, evoked as well in the histories that + recount Athenian destruction of subject allies. + + [...] + + But the desire to clarify the respective status of slave and free is not the + motive, never the explicit motive, of torture. Rather, again and again, even in + the face of arguments discounting evidence derived from torture, speakers in + the courts describe the basanos as a search for truth. How is this possible? + And how are the two desires related? The claim is made that truth resides in + the slave body. + + [...] + + That is, the master possesses reason, logos. When giving evidence in court, he + knows the difference between truth and falsehood, he can reason and produce + true speech, logos, and he can reason about the consequences of falsehood , the + deprivation of his rights as a citizen. The slave, on the other hand, + possessing not reason, but rather a body strong for service (iskhura pros ten + anagkaian khrêsin), must be forced to utter the truth, which he can apprehend, + although not possessing reason as such. Unlike an animal, a being that + possesses only feelings, and therefore can neither apprehend reason, logos, nor + speak, legein, the slave can testify when his body is tortured because he + recognizes reason without possessing it himself. + + [...] + + Thus, according to Aristotle’s logic, representative or not, the slave’s truth + is the master’s truth; it is in the body of the slave that the master’s truth + lies, and it is in torture that his truth is revealed. The torturer reaches + through the master to the slave’s body, and extracts the truth from it. The + master can conceal the truth, since he possesses reason and can choose between + truth and lie, can choose the penalty associated with false testimony. His own + point of vulnerability is the body of his slave, which can be compelled not to + lie, can be forced to produce the truth. If he decides to deny the body of his + slave to the torturer, assumptions Will be made that condemn him. + + [...] + + Aristotle advocates the pragmatic approach; one can argue either side concerning + the truth of torture. + + [...] + + As Gernet says, “Proof is institutional.” Proof, and therefore truth, are + constituted by the Greeks as best found in the evidence derived from torture. + Truth, alêtheia, comes from elsewhere, from another place, from the place of + the other. + +### Torture and Writing + + The tortured body retains scars, marks that recall the violence inflicted upon + it by the torturer. In part because slaves were often tattooed in the ancient + world, such marks of torture resonate in the Greek mind with tattoos, and with + other forms of metaphorical inscription, in Greek thinking considered analogous + to writing on the body.1 I have discussed the topos of corporeal inscription + elsewhere. The woman’s body was in ancient Greece sometimes likened to a + writing tablet, a surface to be ”ploughed,” inscribed by the hand, the plough, + the penis of her husband and master.2 + +The famous case of the tatooed head: + + One especially intriguing mention of slave tattooing occurs in Herodotos’s + Histories, in a narrative in which the possibility of torture remains implicit. + Although I have discussed this episode elsewhere, I want here to draw out its + implications for a consideration of the relationship between torture and truth. + Histiaios of Miletus sends a message urging revolt to a distant ally by shaving + the head of his most trusted slave, tattooing the message on the slave’s head, + then waiting for the slave’s hair to grow back. He sends the slave on his + journey, ordering him to say at the journey’s end only that the “destinataire,” + the receiver of the message, should shave off his hair and look at his head. + The message reaches its goal, and Aristagoras the receiver revolts (Herodotos, + Histories 5.35). + + The tattooed head is a protection against torture. If the slave were captured + and tortured, he would not himself know the message of revolt. He could not + betray his master if questioned and interrogated specifically about his + master’s intentions to rise up against those who have enslaved him. He did not + know the content of Histiaios’ communication with Aristagoras. But he did know + the instructions he bore to Aristagoras, to shave his head and read the message + inscribed there. The ruse only displaces the discovery of the message’s truth + by a single step, but in this case it succeeds in protecting the message. Here + the tattooing, the inscription on the slave’s body, subverts the intention of + torture to expose the truth. + +"Branding": + + In other contexts in ancient Greece, slave tattooing serves as a sort of label. + It is as if writing on the slave body indicated the contents of that body. Such + a function of writing recalls the work of Denise Schmandt-Besserat, who argues + that writing originates in the markings on the outside of packages recording + their contents.3 Aristotle points out in the Politics, as we have seen, that + the slave body ought to reveal its truth, ought to be immediately perceptible + as a servile body to the eye, but in fact sometimes it is not. A tattoo on a + slave reveals his or her true status. In Aristophanes’ Babylonians, of which + only fragments remain, we learn that prisoners of war were sometimes branded or + inscribed with a mark indicating the city they served.4 + + [...] + + though he is a human being, he does not know himself, soon he will know, having + this inscription on his forehead. (74_79)6 + + Herodes invokes the inscription at Delphi, also cited by Plato: gnôthi seauton, + “Know yourself.”7 + + [...] + + This placement of the “epigram,” whatever it is, if it is that, on the metope, + the forehead of the slave, makes the inscription a sign. The message of + Herodotos’s slave was concealed by his hair, directed to a specified other, the + recipient who received the slave as a vehicle for his master’s words. The + communication was not directed to the slave himself. In the case of Herodes’ + slave, the man named “Belly” would bear a sign meant to remind him of his + humble status. + +### Buried Truth + + If torture helped to manage the troublesome differentiation between slave and + free in the ancient city, it also served as a redundant practice reinforcing + the dominant notion of the Greeks that truth was an inaccessible, buried + secret. In his valuable book Les maîtres de vérité dans la Grèce archaïque, + Marcel Detienne describes a historical shift in the Greeks’ ideas about truth + that corresponds to the historical shift from mythic to rational thought.1 + According to Detienne, Alêtheia is at first conceived of by the Greeks in an + ambiguous relationship with Lethe, forgetting; truth is the possession of the + poet and the just king, who has access to this truth through memory. Alêtheia + is caught up in a relationship of ambiguity with Lêthê because, for example, + the poet who speaks truth by using memory also confers truth’s other, + forgetfulness, oblivion of pain and sorrow, on his listeners. His + “magico-religious” speech, as Detienne calls it, which exists in an ambiguous + relationship with truth, persists as the dominant form in the Greek world until + the speech of warriors, the citizens who form the city’s phalanxes, a speech of + dialogue, comes to dominate the social world in the time of the polis. Detienne + associates a resultant secularization of poetic Alêtheia with the name of the + poet Simonides. Doxa, seeming, becomes the rival province of sophistic and + rhetorical speech, while Alêtheia comes to belong to an unambiguously + “philosophico-religious” domain. In this field of discourse the logic of + ambiguity typical of the Alêtheia-Lêthê relationship is replaced by a logic of + contradiction, in which Alêtheia is opposed to Apatê, deception, as its other. + The common use of memory provides a link between these two stages of thinking + truth; the secularization of speech marks a break between a mythic and a + rationalist semantic field in which the term Alêtheia persists. + +### The modern word Tortura + + A word used in addition to alêthês in the Odyssey is atrekês, real, genuine, + with a connotation perhaps of that which does not distort or deviate. The Latin + word torqueo means “to twist tightly, to wind or wrap, to subject to torture, + especially by the use of the rack.” This word may come from the root trek-, + also occurring in Greek, which may give us atraktos, “spindle,” and also + “arrow.”6 (Tortor is used as a cult title of Apollo, “perhaps”, according to + the Oxford Latin Dictionary, “from the quarter at Rome occupied by the + torturers.”)7 Our English word “torture” is taken from this Latin root. The + Oxford English Dictionary defines “torture,” an adaptation of the Latin + tortura, in the following way: + + The infliction of excruciating pain, as practised by cruel tyrants, savages, + brigands, etc., from the delight in watching the agony of a victim, in hatred + or revenge, or as a means of extortion; spec. judicial torture, inflicted by a + judicial or quasi-judicial authority, for the purpose of forcing an accused or + suspected person to confess, or an unwilling witness to give evidence or + information.8 Although the writers of the dictionary list first tyrants, + savages, and brigands as the agents of torture, the first entry in their + citations of the use of the word in English refers to the Acts of the Privy + Council of 1551. This set of connotations, to return to the point, links the + English word torture with the twisted, the distorted, and suggests that the + truth gained as a confession is in English not conceived of as a straight line, + but is rather bent, extorted from time on the rack. + + In Greek, however, not passing through Latin into English for our etymology + (etumos is another word used for “true” in Greek), we have, parallel to + atrekês, the word alêtheia with its suggestion of hiddenness and forgetting. + The connotations of the alternative words nêmertês and atrekês are respectively + “not missing the mark”, and “not deviating from an existing model”; the weight + of alêthês rests instead on the trace of something not forgotten, not slipping + by unnoticed.9 + + [...] + + Even in the texts of the Hippocratic tradition, the body is seen to contain + secrets that must be interpreted, elicited by signs that emerge onto the body’s + surface, as the emanation from the earth arises to possess the Pythia. + + [...] + + Each of these sites of meaning in ancient culture—the epic, oracles, sacred + buildings, the medicalized body—lay out a pattern of obscure, hidden truth that + must be interpreted. + +### Heraclitian truth differs + + The works of the pre-Socratic philosophers (even to presume to call them + philosophers may be to presume too much) present problems of reading for the + historian of philosophy, for the literary and cultural critic. Even the problem + of who is disciplinarily responsible for these texts is insoluble. And the + incompleteness of many pre-Socratic texts causes unease. How can one speak of + philosophical development when only one line, one metaphor, one aphorism + remains, torn out of context, lines repeated to illustrate a well-known point? + The ellipses in the published pre-Socratic fragments recall stopped mouths, + messages gone astray, the utter failure of communication across a distance of + centuries. + + [...] + + The very search for integrity and indivisibility in all things has been called + into question by the heirs of Nietzsche, among them those feminists who see the + emphasis on wholeness and integrity, on the full body, as a strategy of + scholarship that has traditionally excluded the female, who has been identified + as different, heterogeneous, disturbing the integrity of the scholarly body, + incomplete in herself. Aristotle describes the female as a “deformed” + (pepêrômenon) male (Generation of Animals 737a), and argues further that her + contribution to reproduction lacks a crucial ingredient, the principle of soul + (psukhe). The project of scientific textual studies has been to supply the + text’s lack, to reduce the fragmented, partial quality of embodied, material + texts, to reject the defective text as it rejects the defective female. Like + the slave body that needs the supplement of the basanos to produce truth, the + female body and the fragmentary text are both constructed as lacking. + + [...] + + Elsewhere Herakleitos seems to argue against an innate hierarchy of mortal + beings: “War is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others + men; he makes some slaves, others free” (fr. 53). Mortal and immortal status + depends on human history, on events. There is no essence, no absolute truth in + the differences among beings. Circumstances, history, time affect relations of + difference and power.2 This relativism establishes a ground for the vision of + equality among citizens in ancient democratic ideology, and even further, a + point from which to examine the commonly held view that some human beings are + slaves by nature. + + Herakleitos represents an alternative to the essentializing concept of truth as + a buried, hidden substance; he offers a temporal notion of truth, that the + basanos of the physician is good at one time, at another time bad, that war + creates slaves and free, a relative notion of truth. [...] + Herakleitos’s relationship to time, change and process prefigures values of the + democracy and of the pre-Socratic sophists whom the aristocratic philosophical + tradition despised: “As they step into the same rivers, different and (still) + different waters flow upon them” (fr. 12); “we step and do not step into the + same rivers; we are and are not” (fr. 49a). His is not a doctrine of + superficial appearance and deep truth, but rather a celebration of the + mutability and interdependence of all things. The Heraclitean truth, read + within his words, fragmentary as they are, celebrating flux, time, difference, + allows for an alternative model to a hidden truth. [...] + for him truth is process and becoming, obtained through + observation, rather than a fixed, divine and immutable truth of eternity. + +### Truth and memory + + The word anagkê, “constraint,” is associated with the yoke of slavery.10 All of + human experience suffers from its subjection to necessity; the slave offers an + extreme example of the general human condition. In one of her many forms the + goddess who instructs the youth, the Kouros, is mistress of “brute force,” or + of the bonds associated with enslavement, and is therefore binding the + “what-is,” the “true,” in captivity. Like the slave who yields the truth to the + torturer, the “what-is” is bound in domination, and delivers up its truth under + necessity. + + [...] + + Does truth as eternally located elsewhere, either hidden in the body, or hidden + in the earth, or hidden inside or beyond human existence, in some realm + inaccessible to ordinary consciousness, lead by some tortuous path to the + necessity for torture? Can we posit a truth of process and becoming, and + another truth of eternity? If so, the word a-lêtheia seems to carry buried + within it support for the view of hidden truth, of truth brought up from the + depths. The possibility of forgetting leads to the imagination of a buried + realm, the realm of forgetting, of Lethe, which can be represented either + positively or negatively. It is good to forget suffering and pain, regrettable + to forget a message, to forget crucial information that must be transmitted to + a listener; in either case Lethe—or, to coin a word, “letheia”—remains a domain + beyond consciousness. + + [...] + + The dominance of a notion of truth as alêtheia, not forgetting, he attributes + in part to the gradual shift to literacy taking place in the fifth and fourth + centuries.14 The legal corpus reflects the state of the problem of truth in the + fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. Charles Segal has discussed eloquently the + ways in which growing literacy affects concepts of the self and truth in Greek + tragedy.15 + + [...] + + In the dominant literary and philosophical paradigm, the truth is seen to be + forgettable, slipping away from notice, buried, inaccessible, then retrieved + through an effort of memory, through the invocation of divine possession, + through the interrogation by a privileged seeker of some enlightened source; + seeking the truth may involve a journey, a passage through a spatial narrative + of some sort, a request, a sinking down into the past, into the interiority of + memory. This model of truth seeking is consistent with other such paradigms + already suggested earlier, in the law courts, where, as we saw, the violence of + the torturer is thought to be necessary to enforce the production of truth from + the slave, either to force him or her to recall the truth, or to force him or + her to speak the truth for the benefit of the court. + + The slave’s body is thus construed as one of these sites of truth, like the + adyton, the underworld, the interiority of the woman’s body, the elsewhere + toward which truth is always slipping, a Utopian space allowing a less + mediated, more direct access to truth, where the truth is no longer forgotten, + slipping away. The basanos gives the torturer the power to exact from the + other, seen as like an oracular space, like the woman’s hystera, like the + inside of the earth, the realm of Hades, as other and as therefore in + possession of the truth. The truth is thus always elsewhere, always outside the + realm of ordinary human experience, of everyday life, secreted in the earth, in + the gods, in the woman, in the slave. To recall it from this other place + sometimes requires patience, sometimes payment of gifts, sometimes seduction, + sometimes violence. + +### Torture and commodification + + Does it have to do with the invention of coinage, with the idea of abstract + exchange value, and the slave as an exchangeable body, a thing to be tested + like a coin, like a marker for exchange? In the Laws the Athenian says men are + like puppets with strings, and that they should follow the soft, golden string, + the “golden and hallowed drawing of judgment which goes by the name of the + public law of the city” (644-45). |