Research Catalog

Title

Torture and the twilight of empire : from Algiers to Baghdad / Marnia Lazreg.

Author

Lazreg, Marnia.

Publication

Princeton : Princeton University Press, ©2008.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 335 pages : maps; 24 cm

Summary

"Torture and the Twilight of Empire looks at the intimate relationship between torture and colonial domination through a close examination of the French army's coercive tactics during the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962. By tracing the psychological, cultural, and political meanings of torture at the end of the French empire, Marnia Lazreg also sheds new light on the United States and its recourse to torture in Iraq and Afghanistan ... Drawing extensively from archives, confessions by former torturers, interviews with former soldiers, and war diaries, as well as writings by Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others, Lazreg argues that occupying nations justify their systematic use of torture as a regrettable but necessary means of saving Western civilization from those who challenge their rule. She shows how torture was central to guerre révolutionnaire, a French theory of modern warfare that called for total war against the subject population and which informed a pacification strategy founded on brutal psychological techniques borrowed from totalitarian movements. Lazreg seeks to understand torture's impact on the Algerian population - especially women - and also on the French troops who became their torturers."--Jacket.

Series Statement

Human rights and crimes against humanity

Uniform Title

Human rights and crimes against humanity.

Subjects

• Torture
• Torture > Algeria > History > 20th century
• Algeria > History > Revolution, 1954-1962 > Atrocities
• Iraq War, 2003-2011 > Atrocities
• Abu Ghraib Prison

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-322) and index.

Contents

Introduction -- Abbreviations -- Imperial politics and torture -- Revolutionary war theory -- Militarization of the colonial state -- Psychological action -- Models of pacification -- Ethnography of torture -- Doing torture -- Women: between torture and military feminism -- Ideology of torture -- Conscience, imperial identity, and torture -- The Christian church and anti-subversive war -- Sartre, Fanon, and Camus -- Reflections on torture -- Moralizing torture -- Repetitions: from Algiers to Baghdad -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index.

Call Number

JFE 16-972

ISBN

• 9780691131351
• 069113135X

LCCN

2007014846

OCLC

123136732

Author

Lazreg, Marnia.

Title

Torture and the twilight of empire : from Algiers to Baghdad / Marnia Lazreg.

Imprint

Princeton : Princeton University Press, ©2008.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Human rights and crimes against humanity

Human rights and crimes against humanity.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-322) and index.

Connect to:

Table of contents

Research Call Number

JFE 16-972