Outlining the Definitional Boundaries of ‘Torture’

Contemporary legal and academic frameworks around torture are predominately based in the UN Convention against Torture or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (United Nations, 1984). Focus is therefore often placed on the intentional infliction of pain or suffering in the context of obtaining information, for the purposes of punishment, and/or with the involvement or consent of a state official, or sometimes working on behalf of a state. As such, torture is an instrument of state violence, one which is inflicted within sites of detention and confinement, and/or in relation to publicly political agendas. As UN Secretary General António Guterres recently noted, ‘The prohibition of torture is absolute – under all circumstances. Yet this core principle is undermined every day in detention centres, prisons, police stations, psychiatric institutions and elsewhere’ (Guterres, 2019). This statement, like many others, reiterates legalistic notions of torture as an infliction of suffering which relates almost exclusively to confinement. While this is of paramount importance in the context of state crime, there is significant scope for developing a gendered analysis of torture both within and beyond this sphere. These discussions, debates and cases about what constitutes torture have serious sociopolitical consequences, as seen in the context of, for example, the ground-breaking Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture (Jones, 2014). However, the one common thread throughout much scholarship and literature is that it takes for granted normative definitions of torture, with little discussion of what torture is or what we mean when we use the term. As this chapter, and later chapters will highlight, over-dependence on this deterministic epistemological stance can be highly problematic.