Torture in the Present of the Past: A Literary and Postcolonial Misreading of Ireland v. UK and Public Committee against Torture in Israel v. Israel through J. M. Coetzee's novel 'Waiting for the Barbarians'.

摘要

In this thesis, I examine The Public Committee against Torture in Israel v. Israel (1999) and Ireland v. UK (1978), two modern cases about torture in democratic societies. Based on the Law as Literature perspective of understanding legal texts through literary interpretations, analysis and criticism, I employ the literary methodology of 'misreading' to situate the two cases in the (post)colonial histories from which they derive, histories which are not present in the text of the cases. I rely on the depiction of torture as a colonial practice in J.M. Coetzee's novel Waiting for the Barbarians to demonstrate how both cases deny and thereby reinforce the colonized subjectivity of the torture victims In analyzing the two decisions, I compare how identities are discussed in relation to the courts' decisions on whether interrogation techniques employed by state officials constituted acts of torture. In this thesis, I argue that understanding the colonial history is essential to understanding the dynamics and implications of the interrogation techniques as continuing acts of colonization.