The Ticking Bomb Scenario: Evaluating Torture as an Interrogation Method



Farrell, M ORCID: 0000-0001-6023-638X
(2020) The Ticking Bomb Scenario: Evaluating Torture as an Interrogation Method. In: Research Handbook on Torture. Edward Elgar, pp. 10-41. ISBN 978 1 78811 395 3

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Abstract

The ticking bomb scenario and the focus on torture as a method of interrogation are ubiquitous in public and academic debate. It also continues to underpin policies of torture. This chapter shows how the ticking bomb hypothetical inhibits understanding of the practice of torture and how it neutralises the ideology of torture and facilitates its practice - torture is greeted as exceptional rather than understood as a continuous practice of violence. By exposing the ideology, it is possible to reveal the way in which the ticking bomb scenario serves as a more palatable proxy for the erasure of ‘political subjectivity’, and the creation of new political subjectivities, in the ‘war on terror’, in the Empire and in the metropole. Torture is not about information and is not a method of interrogation. Torture becomes about the subjugation, pacification or correction of those constructed as ‘not fully human’.

Item Type: Book Section
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 12 Sep 2019 15:08
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 00:26
DOI: 10.4337/9781788113960.00007
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3054358