Organizers: Cornell University’s Southeast Asia Program and Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Description:

In 2021, a group of anti-narcotics cops in Nakhon Sawan, Thailand suffocated a man to death with plastic bags. The torture and killing would have gone unreported but that it was captured on a video, which a lawyer posted online. News reports circled around the lead protagonist, a superintendent living a playboy lifestyle, and questions about how the lawyer got hold of the video. 

In this lecture, Nick Cheesman takes a different tack. The video serves as a starting point for him to revisit Elaine Scarry’s (1985) thesis that torture is characterized by the interplay between the physical torment of the captive and the verbal domination of their torturers. Put another way, torturers’ attacks on their captives’ bodies are given meaning by how they talk.

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