The Effects of Torture, Essay Example

Torture has always been an issue in the history of the world. While many have put the issues of torture of war in the back of their minds, the tragic events caused by ISIS and other international organizations have brought the issues of torture back in the spotlight. World leaders and politicians have longed danced around the issues of torture to avoid national and international backlash. Torture can be defined as an inflicting intentional mental or severe physical suffering or pain for the purpose of obtaining a confession or information, coercion, intimidation, or punishment of someone. Torture has long been an instrument used by colonizing communities and their citizens; this is the instance in which J.M. Coetzee implied in his novel, Waiting for the Barbarians. The use of torture as a colonial practice was reinforced to colonize the subjectivity of the torture victims that was efficient in extracting the truth from the barbarians

In looking at Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) by J.M. Coetzee, he examines the critical themes of the postcolonial thought such as representation, colonial discourse, and the “other”. The novel’s characterization, narration, and setting that are located in an indeterminate time and place, in which to emphasize the continuities in the modernity of colonial discourse. Within this book, modernity of the imperial authority is manifested in how the colonized subjects are justified as a mechanism for finding truth in their torture, and how they are represented. Coetzee’s protagonist and narrator depict the complex relationships between knowledge and power production, also to the relationships among political agency, language, and torture. The novel ultimately portrays colonization and torture, and how knowledge is produced from the torture that solidifies the means used in sustaining colonial power.  Coetzee utilizes the post-colonial literature in which highlights the complexities of ascertaining in postcolonial discourse the truth, in using it obtained through torture as a disturbing example of the pliability of the truth.  The place and time in which the novel is set is unspecified, even though it can be implied in which the story’s plot is influenced by the politics of South Africa. While the story could be taken as an allegory beyond the context of South African politics, the author intentionally blurs the lines between pre-modernity and modernity, and post-colonial and colonial in order to place emphasis between them on the continuity.

The novel is set in an “unspecified Empire’s” outpost which has evolved into a 3,000 inhabited agricultural settlement. Magistrate serves as the novel’s protagonist and narrator that oversee at the outpost the Empire’s affairs. At the beginning of the novel, the goal of the Magistrate is before his retirement to live out his days quietly and just. “For the rest I watch the sun rise and set, eat and sleep and am content.” (Coetzee) He appreciates the rich position of the boss typical officer in a station on the edges of the known domain, and he invests his free energy joining in pastimes, for example, his archeological work, chasing and perusing classics. However, in the Empire’s anticipation of a “barbarian” attack, these plans are disrupted.

Joll, the Colonel, and his men sideline the duties of the Magistrate while they are tasked for the Empire in containing the threat of the barbarian. The Empire employs towards their goal of eradicating this peril is by the mechanism of torture that is justified as means to acquire evidence to prevent the attack on Empire. Joll goes on the expedition, arriving on the frontier, to bring back barbarian captives that he interrogates and tortures about the Empire’s alleged plot of attack. It becomes apparent in the course of the narration; it has been perceived that the threat of the barbarians is a way that Empire is able to sustain itself. As well as how the Empire distinguishes itself by the dichotomies invoked, from the barbarians that exists only in language and is ahistorical.

The Magistrate consents by complying to make space for the barbarians and the interrogations. The Magistrate does the majority of this being openly “mindful of what may be going on, and his ear is even tuned to the pitch of human torment” (Coetzee). However, the Magistrate all can do is grumble about his decision of residence in the “meandering apartment over the storerooms and kitchen” due to the sound of torment in the night. He gripes: “I feel old and tired, I need to rest” (Coetzee). This extremely shallow reaction to the detainees’ cries, in which he is aware that the prisoners are being tormented, says a great part of the hero. He is just spurred by his own selfish reasons, and this clearly uncovers his narcissistic, self-centered perspective. Notwithstanding when the Magistrate faces Joll about the torture, it is as an easygoing discussion at the “relaxation” of the Colonel. This disposition of the Magistrate’s may be because of his conviction that since he is not partaking in the torment of the detainees, that he ought to be free from blame in light of the fact that he is not capable. In any case, it can be seen as the individuals who latently permit torment and mistreatment to occur are the same amount of Barbarians as the torturers. By turning a visually impaired eye, the protagonist is, regardless, supporting the utilization of torture on the detainees.

Throughout the entirety of the novel, Magistrate acknowledges this as one of the truths, in which will plague him day and night.  It is not clear until the Magistrates understand the consequence of the examination that we start to see his changing point of view. At the point when the Magistrate enters the silo in the wake of accepting the opposing report from the gatekeepers, he discovers that the body of the father is wrapped in a “long white group” in one corner, and the boy that is severely beaten lie in the other corner. Instantly, the Magistrate arranges to inspect the corpse, and the body be taken into the yard. He discovers that the report was incorrect in light of the fact that it is clear that the man passed on because of the delivered injuries (Coetzee). The magistrate goes to the child and tries to determine the circumstance by arguing that the child must tell the truth to the officer, as all they want to hear is the truth. (Coetzee). Be that as it may, the Magistrate is not considering the nature of his consequences. In looking closer at the narrator, he is seen as torturer, who disregards identification, an executioner who sees himself as a rescuer, the protagonist is, maybe, as much a typical vicinity for the savages as the brutes are for the colonialists.

The central “barbarian” character is a woman that the Magistrate has found in the streets begging. She was blinded and maimed by Joll during his interrogations. The girl is brought home with the Magistrate and cleans her up, sleeping in her bed, and probing her with questions about the torture that Joll and his man inflicted on her. While she deflects most of his questions, she embodies symbolically the voice and presence of the Barbarians, which are also defined by their silence in the wake of the continued torture. The Magistrate ultimately takes upon himself to express his dissatisfaction with the treatment of the barbarians and becomes the voice against the Empire’s torture and discursive practices.

The depiction of investigative torture and the conversations between the Magistrate and Joll represent the arguments against and for as a mean of obtaining evidence or “truth”. Joll justifies the torture as a method of finding the truth while the Magistrate continues to be unsure that pain will provide reliable evidence that implicates the threat of the barbarians. Even with the arrival of the father and child, he tries to advocate that the barbarians are not a threat to the Empire. However, Joll insists on torturing the prisoners, his rustication in seeking the truth is:

“I am speaking of a situation in which I am probing for the truth, in which I have to exert pressure to find it. First I get lies you see, this is what happens, first lies, then pressure, then more lies then more pressure, then the break, then more pressure, then the truth. That is how you get the truth.” (Coetzee)

For Joll, in exacting pain he is ready to get the truth from the prisoners. In this truth, he is able to ascertain if they pose a threat to the Empire.  However, the Magistrate gathers that this is an unreliable technique, as evidenced by the child confessing that he and the old man were raiding the livestock of the Empire, and they were planning to launch an attack on the Empire. By making the physical pain of the child the source of the “truth”, the torture is justified in producing the desired discourse for Joll.

While the Empire tries to exert themselves as a legitimate political system, unlike the barbarians, in which they view as brutish and evil, the Empire relies on extracting the truth through their torture and violence. The citizens of the Empire see the incidents of tortures as spectacles that produce the discourse of the Empire’s power. The citizens are summoned to whip one of the barbarians as they embody that the barbarians are the enemies and pledge their allegiance to the Empire. In which the Empire uses this allegiance, as motivation to continue their mechanisms of extracting the truth from the barbarians. Coetzee portrays both the colonial approach to torture as a method of use in origination as a tool for creating discourses of power and their justification of torture. By depicting the torture is rooted on the vilification of the barbarians, the author demonstrates conclusively that the modern practice of the use of tortures is rooted in the continual colonization of the Empire over the barbarians. However, for the Empire it is effective in exerting their power and validating their belief that the barbarians are a threat, but in reality torture just produces their “truth” and not the actual “truth”.

References

Coetzee, J.M. (2004). Waiting for the Barbarians. Vintage Books: London.