30 review for The Subject of Torture: Psychoanalysis and Biopolitics in Television and Film

1. 

   4 out of 5

   Colin Cox – Mar 30, 2020

   Hilary Neroni's exploration of torture and biopolitics begins in an inauspicious place: the 2004 photos of an American soldier smiling near the bodies of torture victims. Often these Abu Ghraib photos have an unmistakably sexual dimension. One, for example, shows Specialist Lynndie England pointing with apparent glee at hooded prisoners masturbating (authorities such as England forced these prisoners to do so). For Neroni, the enjoyment these photos avow is essential to understanding the logic o Hilary Neroni's exploration of torture and biopolitics begins in an inauspicious place: the 2004 photos of an American soldier smiling near the bodies of torture victims. Often these Abu Ghraib photos have an unmistakably sexual dimension. One, for example, shows Specialist Lynndie England pointing with apparent glee at hooded prisoners masturbating (authorities such as England forced these prisoners to do so). For Neroni, the enjoyment these photos avow is essential to understanding the logic of torture. She writes, "The sexuality in the photographs reveals the shocking and counterintuitive aspect of enjoyment that resides in torture and also throws into question its legitimacy as an effective military tool with which to procure information" (3). But acknowledging the constitutive power of enjoyment is troubling for not only government officials such as George Bush but even executives, directors, and showrunners of popular media that often dramatizes the presumed efficacy of torture. Neroni argues, "In order for torture to have legitimacy in the modern world, one must obscure the various elements that constitute" (4). If torture were not, as many argue, an exercise in extracting the truth for national security purposes but instead the site of excessive enjoyment, then the practice would inevitably crumble, and a necessary part of this ideological injunction is the entertainment industry. Shows such as 24 "reveal that ideology today doesn't interpellate individuals as subjects; it interpellates them as bodies" (8). Despite what shows like 24 argue, the body is not the site of truth; however, for torture to work on the level of fantasy, "one must then believe that the body is a repository for truth and that performing violence on the body will cause the truth that the body hides to emerge" (10). For Neroni, though, the way to combat the torture-as-a-truth-procedure fantasy is not to cite statistics suggesting that torture never works. Instead, one must suggest the "pure body" does not exist. She writes, "to combat torture is to insist that there is no such thing as a pure body, that the idea of a body that just wants to survive is simply an ideological figure" (11). To delegitimize torture, we must first problematize biopolitics because "Privileging the body leaves one with no recourse" (11). What Neroni ultimately asks her reader to consider is what the torture-as-a-truth-procedure fantasy attempts to obscure. This is why, for Neroni, a show like Alias is much better at understanding the desiring subject than shows like 24. In Alias, characters find the truth, not through torture, but fantasy. Neroni writes, "In Alias, it is exactly the desiring subject, the subject of fiction, who reveals the needed information...Through its recourse to fiction, Alias reveals that the torturer is always face to face with a desiring subject, and this desire renders torture ineffective" (19-20). Unlike 24, a show that reduces the subject to the body, Alias understands "the subject is not reducible to a body" (20). Since George Bush left office in 2009, many have disputed the War on Terror and the torture fantasy it inaugurated. However, Neroni's contribution to this conversation is so significant for two reasons: first, it does the necessary work of challenging biopolitics, and second, it identifies what the torture fantasy attempts and needs to obscure. If we wanted yet another reason to see why psychoanalysis matters, Neroni provides it.

2. 

   4 out of 5

   Ben DeVries –

3. 

   4 out of 5

   Tom –

4. 

   4 out of 5

   Brian –

5. 

   5 out of 5

   Cindy Zeiher –

6. 

   5 out of 5

   Chris –

7. 

   5 out of 5

   Matthew –

8. 

   4 out of 5

   Marylou R. –

9. 

   5 out of 5

   Sarah –

10. 

    4 out of 5

    Elizabeth –

11. 

    5 out of 5

    roscoe –

12. 

    4 out of 5

    Jordan –

13. 

    4 out of 5

    Marina –

14. 

    4 out of 5

    Brian –

15. 

    5 out of 5

    Prakitesh Deka –

16. 

    4 out of 5

    Ben –

17. 

    4 out of 5

    Amr DIN –

18. 

    4 out of 5

    Nick Radunovic –

19. 

    5 out of 5

    Ameena –

20. 

    4 out of 5

    Mia Vallet –

21. 

    4 out of 5

    Blake –

22. 

    5 out of 5

    Taylor –

23. 

    5 out of 5

    Sofi –

24. 

    4 out of 5

    Carrie Syme –

25. 

    4 out of 5

    Jilly Kent –

26. 

    5 out of 5

    Nick –

27. 

    4 out of 5

    Kevin Lossez –

28. 

    5 out of 5

    Mackenzie –

29. 

    5 out of 5

    Simon Gros –

30. 

    5 out of 5

    Ardem –