Showing papers on "Cruelty published in 2003"

From Animal Cruelty to Serial Murder: Applying the Graduation Hypothesis

Abstract: Although serial murder has been recorded for centuries, limited academic attention has been given to this important topic. Scholars have attempted to examine the causality and motivations behind the rare phenomenon of serial murder. However, scant research exists which delves into the childhood characteristics of serial murderers. Using social learning theory, some of these studies present supporting evidence for a link between childhood animal cruelty and adult aggression toward humans. Based on five case studies of serial murderers, we contribute to the existing literature by exploring the possible link between childhood cruelty toward animals and serial murder with the application of the graduation hypothesis.

Terror and triumph : the nature of Black religion

Abstract: Scholarly and eminently readable, Anthony Pinn's thoroughly researched and authoritatively presented history will be welcomed by students, scholars, and general readers alike. With exquisite attention to cultural detail and a brilliant interpretation of interdisciplinary sources, Terror and Triumph is essential reading for all who want to understand better the terror of human cruelty and the triumph of embodied resiliency.

Portrayals of violence and group difference in newspaper photographs: Nationalism and media

Abstract: The authors analyzed group membership of violent agents and types of violence in front-page photographs from 21 years of The New York Times. Using a trimodal definition of media violence, they confirmed the hypothesis that non-U.S. agents are represented as more explicitly violent than U.S. agents, and that the latter are associated with disguised modes of violence more often than the former. The recurring image of non-U.S. violence is that of order brutally ruptured or enforced. By contrast, images of U.S. violence are less alarming and suggest order without cruelty. The study showed how violent imagery is associated with in-group and out-group status stratification.

Animals, politics and justice: Rawlsian liberalism and the plight of non-humans

Abstract: It is argued that Rawls illegitimately excludes animals as beneficiaries of the deliberations in the original position. Claims about the superiority of contractarianism from an animal protection perspective are devalued, however, because Rawls' principles of justice are themselves derived from, or at least influenced by, preexisting moral intuitions and values. In addition, excluding animals from Rawls' theory of justice leaves them subject to the liberal principle of moral pluralism. Here, in theory and practice, the treatment of animals becomes a matter of moral preferences, whereby the state is reluctant to intervene to prohibit those who see no wrong in animal cruelty.

Dilemmas of Reconciliation: Cases and Concepts

Abstract: Edited by Carol A. L. Prager and Trudy GovierWaterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2003, vi, 360pp, $34.95 paper (ISBN 0-88920-415-2)Mass human rights abuses claimed more lives in the 20th century than warfare. Between 1900 and 1987, 170 million people perished at the hands of their own governments. In comparison, 34.4 million people died in battle over the same period. In the post-Cold War era, genocide in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and continued state repression added to this total. Additional millions have died because of human rights abuses by non-state actors, such as factions in civil wars. Chaim Kaufmann has proposed that reconciliation may be impossible in the wake of mass atrocities, especially in ethnic civil wars. Dilemmas of Reconciliation acknowledges the many inherent difficulties of the reconciliation process but suggests that it can and should be attempted. It poses a crucial question: "Practical politics and life underscore the necessity to move on, but how is this possible, or even conceivable, when unspeakable cruelty has been inflicted...?" (p 1). Although the book fails to answer this question, it does offer a valuable collection of tools for further analysis.This edited volume is divided into a conceptual section and a case study section, and brings together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners. This eclectic approach enables it to offer high-quality analyses on a broad range of issues, but it also results in a lack of overall coherence.In the conceptual section, the philosophers Trudy Govier, Susan Dwyer and Carol Prager elucidate the concepts of acknowledgement, reconciliation and understanding crime. They provide subtle discussions of these important notions that highlight the theoretical complexity of reconciliation processes. The mediator Marc Forget stresses the benefits of restorative justice. The philosopher and lawyer Larry May contends that the collective nature of mass human rights abuses makes them international crimes. The political scientist Thomas Keating cautions against the potentially damaging consequences of outside interventions in fragile reconciliation processes. However, although it begins with David Crocker's "normative framework" for reconciliation processes, this section is disjointed. Subsequent chapters do not situate themselves within this framework. Most notably, Dwyer and Forget present radically different notions of reconciliation, differing in particular on whether the concept should be stripped of its connotations of healing and forgiveness. …

Significance of family risk factors in development of childhood animal cruelty

Abstract: The literature suggests that physical child abuse, sexual child abuse, paternal alcoholism, paternal unavailability, and domestic violence may be significant in development of childhood animal cruelty. Two groups of early- to late adolescent boys (CTA and N-CTA) in residential treatment for conduct disorder were compared in the current study on histories of these family risk factors. The adolescents in Group 1 were comprised of boys who had conduct problems with documented histories of animal cruelty (n = 50; CTA). Group 2 consisted of adolescent boys (n = 50; N-CTA) with conduct problems, but without documented histories of animal cruelty. Results showed that children in the CTA group had significantly greater histories of physical and/or sexual child abuse and domestic violence in comparison to children in the N-CTA group. These results suggest that physical and/or sexual abuse to a child, and exposure to domestic violence, may be significant in the development of childhood animal cruelty.

Toxicology and New Social Ethics for Animals

Abstract: The issue of animal treatment has emerged as a major social concern over the past three decades. This ramified in a new ethic for animal treatment that goes beyond concern about cruelty and attempts to eliminate animal pain and suffering, whatever its source. This is evidenced by laws governing animal research in many countries. Insofar as toxicology can entail significant and prolonged animal suffering, it is at loggerheads with this new ethic. Ways are suggested for the toxicological community to put itself in harmony with the ethic and thereby preserve its autonomy.

"A great effusion of blood"? : interpreting medieval violence

Abstract: Contributors Abbreviations Introduction Mark D. Meyerson, Daniel Thiery, and Oren Falk PART I: VIOLENCE AND IDENTITY FORMATION 1 Violence and the Making of Wiglaf John M. Hill 2 Defending Their Masters' Honour: Slaves as Violent Offenders in Fifteenth-Century Valencia Debra Blumenthal 3 The Murder of Pau de Sant Marti: Jews, Conversos, and the Feud in Fifteenth-Century Valencia Mark D. Meyerson 4 Violence and the Sacred City: London, Gower, and the Rising of 1381 Eve Salisbury 5 Bystanders and Hearsayers First: Reassessing the Role of the Audience in Duelling Oren Falk 6 Scottish National Heroes and the Limits of Violence Anne Mckim PART II: VIOLENCE AND THE TESTAMENT OF THE BODY 7 Seeing the Gendering of Violence: Female and Male Martyrs in the South English Legendary Beth Crachiolo 8 Violence or Cruelty? An Intercultural Perspective Daniel Baraz 9 Body as Champion of Church Authority and Sacred Place: The Murder of Thomas Becket Dawn Marie Hayes 10 Chaucer's Clerk's Tale: Interrogating 'Virtue' through Violence M.C. Bodden 11 Violence, the Queen's Body, and the Medieval Body Politic John Carmi Parsons 12 Violence in the Early Robin Hood Poems 268 Richard Firth Green 13 Canon Laws regarding Female Military Commanders up to the Time of Gratian: Some Texts and Their Historical Contexts David Hay Conclusion Mark D. Meyerson, Daniel Thiery, and Oren Falk

Violence and the Subject

Abstract: Violence confronts us increasingly, everywhere: how are we to make sense of it? Its ubiquity begs the question of analytical differentiation. This article seeks to open the field by suggesting a fivefold typology: violence as loss of meaning; violence as non-sense; violence as cruelty; fundamental violence; and founding violence. The idea of analytically differentiating between types of violence cannot avoid the fact that sometimes victims are also perpetrators in other ways, and that even violent activity is not conducted only by essentially violent subjects. Violence needs to be connected to modernity and to problems of identity formation and not only to personal or collective risk.

Medieval Cruelty: Changing Perceptions, Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

Abstract: The Middle Ages are often thought of as an era during which cruelty was a major aspect of life, a view that stems from the anti-Catholic polemics of the Reformation. Daniel Baraz makes the striking discovery that the concept of cruelty, which had been an important issue in late antiquity, received little attention in the medieval period before the thirteenth century. From that point on, interest in cruelty increased until it reached a peak late in the sixteenth century.Medieval Cruelty's extraordinary scope ranges from the writings of Seneca to those of Montaigne and draws from sources that include the views of Western Christians, Eastern Christians, and Muslims. Baraz examines the development of the concept of cruelty in legal texts, philosophical treatises, and other works that attempt to discuss the nature of cruelty. He then considers histories, martyrdom accounts, and literary works in which cruelty is represented rather than discussed directly. In the wake of the intellectual transformations of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, an increasing focus on the intentions motivating an individual's acts rekindled the discussion of cruelty. Baraz shows how ethical thought and practice about cruelty, which initially focused on external forces, became a tool to differentiate internal groups and justify violence against them. This process is evident in attacks on the Jews, in the peasant rebellions of the later Middle Ages, and in the Wars of Religion.

Experiments With People: Revelations From Social Psychology

Abstract: Experiments With People showcases 28 intriguing studies that have significantly advanced our understanding of human thought and social behavior. These studies, mostly laboratory experiments, shed light on the irrationality of everyday thinking, the cruelty and indifference of 'ordinary' people, the operation of the unconscious mind, and the intimate bond between the self and others. This book tells the inside story of how social psychological research gets done and why it matters.

Leaderless resistance today

Abstract: This paper explores the use of the Leaderless Resistance technique by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, the Earth Liberation Front, and individual Islamic terrorists carrying out acts against U.S. interests.

Cruelty, Horror, and the Will to Redemption

Abstract: Americans cherish the idea that good eventually triumphs over evil. After briefly arguing that a proper understanding of the moral harm of cruelty calls into question the credibility of popular American idioms of redemption, I argue that the epistemic dynamics of horror help account for the commanding grip of this rhetoric on the popular imagination, and I suggest that this idiom has morally problematic features that warrant the attention of feminists.

Abolishing ‘Cruel Punishments’: A Reappraisal of the Chinese Roots and Long-term Efficiency of the Xinzheng Legal Reforms

Abstract: The 24th of April 1905 is a date of no particular significance in the current historiography of China. However, the memorial submitted this day by the Imperial Commissioners in charge of legal reforms, Wu Tingfang and Shen Jiaben, entailed the immediate suppression of so-called 'cruel punishments' (kuxing), such as dismemberment (lingchi), exposure of the head (xiaoshou) and desecration of the corpse (lushi). Judicial torture and bamboo flogging were suppressed straight after. From then on, cruelties of the past were illegal, and prohibited in practice, even though a penal code conforming to modern standards was not completed before 1928. China thus entered into the age of uneven and uncertain eradication of illegal but recurrent practices of torture. Though spectacular outbursts of violence occurred in contemporary China, with the complicity or under instigation of the highest authorities, those were not openly authorized by law, and they were eventually denounced, and some of their authors prosecuted. The shift from cruelty openly legitimized and practiced by the state to its official prohibition and ashamed toleration is an epochal change, which stems from the April 24th 1905 memorials. As the scope of torture is too broad, I will narrow the scope of this paper to the most decisive breakthrough: the abolition of lingchi, or dismemberment. This penalty was provided against crimes threatening sovereignty: it was at first employed in the crushing of rebellions against the emperor, but was gradually extended to familial crimes, as the murder of parents by children, or husbands by wives, or masters by servants. In brief, lingchi was the guardian of traditional bounds of subjection.' Its abolition meant the entering of

Classical Film Violence: Designing and Regulating Brutality in Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1968

Abstract: This work examines the interplay between the aesthetics and the censorship of violence in classic Hollywood films from 1930 to 1968, the era of the Production Code, when filmmakers were required to have their scripts approved before they could start production. Stephen Prince explains how Hollywood's filmmakers designed violence in response to the regulations of the Production Code Administration (PCA) and regional censors. Taking this one step further, he shows that graphic violence in contemporary films actually has its roots in these early films. He explains how Hollywood's filmakers were drawn to violent scenes and how they ""pushed the envelope"" of what they could depict by manipulating the PCA. Examining violent scene construction in key films of the period, Prince shows that many choices about camera positions, editing and blocking of the action and sound were functional responses by filmmakers to regulatory constraints, necessary for clearing release approval from the PCA and then in surviving scrutiny by the nation's state and municipal censor boards. Prince's study is a stylistic history of American screen violence that is grounded in industry documentation. Using PCA files, he traces the negotiations over violence carried out by filmmakers and PCA officials and then shows how these negotiations left their traces on picture and sound in the finished films. Almost everything revealed by this research is contrary to what most have believed about Hollywood and film violence. Chapters include ""Throwing the Extra Punch"" and ""Cruelty, Sadism and the Horror Film"".

Failing Gender Justice in Anti-Dowry Law

Abstract: This article reports on important research in Pune concerning the use of several provisions under Indian criminal law that were designed to protect women against dowry-related atrocities and various forms of domestic violence. It shows that the intentions of the legislators are being undermined by inefficient strategies for implementing these statutory provisions. The result has been a widespread perception that India’s anti-dowry law and the laws seeking to curb domestic violence have remained totally ineffective and do not protect women adequately against any form of cruelty, domestic violence or even murder in the name of dowry. The article outlines the relevant legislation, examines in detail judicial reactions to a large number of complaints under s. 498-A of the Indian Penal Code of 1860, and concludes by making a number of recommendations in order to improve the protection of women with regard to domestic violence.

Christianity and Criminal Punishment

Abstract: Christianity organizes thinking about punishment around the value of love. Love requires a focus on the common good and on benefit to the soul or character. Punishments harmful to the soul are to be avoided, and punishments beneficial to the soul are to be favored. This has important implications for the death penalty. If there is good reason to believe that execution generally stands in the way of repentance and rebirth of the criminal or if there is good reason to believe that such punishment generally reinforces cruelty and other sinful dispositions in the law abiding or if there is no compelling reason to think that capital punishment is required for the common good, then Christians will presumably oppose capital punishment.

Chinese Executions: Visualising their Differences with European Supplices

Abstract: That the Chinese were singled out by a native cruelty in refined tortures became a widespread representation at the turn of the twentieth century. This cliche relied mainly on photographs of executions that could be diffused worldwide through modern mass media such as illustrated journals or postcards. The instant photographs taken from life provided an exact rendition of what really happened on a Chinese execution ground, and anyone seeing the image could have no doubt as to the reality of Chinese cruelty, which was otherwise ascertained by true or bogus eyewitness reports. The impression was so strong and penetrated so deep in the Western imagination that it still survives as a deja vu, an 'eye print'. Thus, the answer to why the Chinese have been represented as natively cruel must proceed from a careful reexamination of the visual documentation on Chinese executions. Western observers or commentators naturally tended to construe capital executions according to what was practiced and abundantly represented in their own civilisation. European executions obeyed a complex model that the author proposes to call 'the supplice pattern'. The term supplice designates tortures and tormented executions, but it also includes their cultural background. The European way of executing used religious deeds, aesthetic devices and performing arts techniques which themselves called for artistic representations through paintings, theatre, etc. Moreover, Christian civilisation was unique in the belief that the spectacle of a painful execution had a redemptive effect on the criminals and the attendants as well. Chinese executions obeyed an entirely different conception. They were designed to show that punishment fitted the crime as provided in the penal code. All details were aimed to highlight and inculcate the meaning of the law, while signs of emotions, deeds, words, that could have interfered with the lesson in law were prohibited. In China, capital executions were not organized as a show nor subject to aesthetic representations, and they had no redemptive function. This matter-of-fact way of executing people caused Westerners deep uneasiness. The absence of religious background and staging devices was interpreted as a sign of barbarity and cruelty. What was stigmatised was not so much the facts that their failure to conform to the 'supplice pattern' that constituted for any Westerner the due process of capital executions.

`Some Strange Things Happening in our Country': Opposing Proposed Changes in Anti-Cruelty Laws in Canada

Abstract: Ideologies are most efficient when they operate invisibly to naturalize power relations, yet even the most successful hegemonies are not seamless. Contradictions in our attitudes towards animals are exposed by welfare measures such as anti-cruelty laws. This article examines opposition to proposed amendments to Canada's anti-cruelty legislation. Directed at individual acts of violence, anti-cruelty amendments proposed in Bill C-15B posed no challenge to animal exploitation industries and consisted of only moderately increased penalties for deliberately sadistic actions in non-institutional settings. The amendments were not motivated by ideas from an animal-rights perspective and constituted no fundamental change. Nevertheless, industrial users of animals presented even modest reforms as a direct threat to their interests. This article examines discursive strategies of those who profit from institutionalized abuse and killing of animals and shows that they deliberately exaggerated the amendments' effects a...

“Was Anyone Hurt?”: The Ends of Satire in A Handful of Dust

Abstract: Wallace Stevens wrote that death is the mother of beauty, but for Evelyn Waugh death more often gives birth to comedy. In Decline and Fall, a schoolboy is killed by a stray bullet from a track official's misfired pistol. In Vile Bodies, a gossip columnist puts his head in an oven when he can no longer get into the right parties. In Black Mischief, the hero unwittingly consumes the stewed body of his lover during an African emperor's funeral rites. Such a casual acceptance of violent and untimely death has become an emblem of Waugh's sensibility, the signal characteristic of his dark humor. In Waugh's fiction, life is nasty, British, and short. With an ambivalence characteristic of Waugh's critics, Conor Cruise O'Brien has called this apparent indifference to death a "schoolboy delight in cruelty" (50), distancing himself morally and emotionally from Waugh's delight while still praising the author's peculiar talents. O'Brien discerns, even as he reproduces, a discrepancy in the fiction between ethics and pleasure, a gap that some theorists have argued is endemic to satire itself, which assumes a moral stance in defense of traditional, communal values, but exults in the representation of the vice and folly it excoriates. As Michael Seidel has put it, despite his "curative, meliorative, or restorative role," the satirist is inevitably "implicated in the debasing form of his action" (3, 4).1 In order to clean up, you have to get dirty. If Waugh's fiction offers a useful case study in the paradoxes of satire, it is equally valuable for the questions it opens in understanding modernism. For Waugh's attitudes toward both modernism and modernity more generally are similarly vexed. As George McCartney has written: "Waugh's response to the modern was marked by certain fruitful ambivalence. In his official pose he was the curmudgeon who despised innovation, but the anarchic artist in him frequently delighted in its formal and thematic possibilities" (Roaring 3). Although Waugh later in life repeatedly denounced modernist formal experimentation, his early fiction nonetheless came to embody a modern sensibility in its apparent rejection of the novel's traditional ethical obligations. Even in matters of form, he

Public Secrets: Sodomy and the Pillory in the Eighteenth Century and Beyond

Abstract: INTRODUCTIONOn 11 April 1780, Edmund Burke stood up without notice in the English parliament and gave what might just have been the most unexpected speech of his political career. The topic of Burke's impromptu rant was a "melancholy circumstance" he had stumbled upon in the newspapers that morning.2 The report detailed the death the day before of a man sentenced to stand in the pillory on Saint Margaret's Hill. The man-along with a codefendant who was also grievously injured-had been forced to submit to the punishment after being convicted of a crime, as Burke put it, "such as could scarcely be mentioned, much less defended or extenuated. The commission of sodomitical practices" (389). Burke subsequently elaborated upon the indefensible nature of sodomy, describing it as "a crime of all others the most detestable, because it tend[s] to vitiate the morals of the whole community" (389). Despite his disgust at the crime, however, and his reluctance even to mention it, Burke felt compelled to call the attention of his colleagues to the plight of the "poor wretch" who had died, and above all to the circumstances surrounding his unfortunate demise (388). Further overcoming his repugnance at the offence, Burke did not hesitate in his speech to condemn the punishment, or at the very least the outcome of that punishment, in the most uncompromising terms: the death of this man, he concluded, should be treated, and thus prosecuted, as a murder.The case to which Burke alluded involved two men, a coachman named William Smith and a plasterer named Theodosius Read, convicted not of sodomy per se-a capital offense for which they would both have been hanged-but of the lesser crime of attempted sodomy (also sometimes known as sodomitical assault).3 Well in advance of the hour set for the punishment, a crowd had gathered near the site of the pillory, as was usual in such cases, armed with projectiles including dead dogs and cats, as well as stones.4 There is no question that both Read and Smith suffered mightily and even risked their lives at the hands of this crowd, who, according to Burke, "attacked [Smith], and his fellow criminal with great fury" (389). In this case, however, there seems to have been a further mortal danger attached to the punishment: Smith was unusually short of stature, and, Burke claimed, this fact led to his rather gruesome death. Unable to reach the holes made for his head and arms, Smith "hung rather than walked as the pillory turned round" (389), falling dead from the contraption at the end of the hour; having, ironically, been hanged after all. Burke's ultimate contention that the officers of the law ought to be held responsible for Smith's death is based on his conviction that they should have intervened when they became aware of his inability to stand in the pillory unassisted. To this end, Burke makes a point of retelling one particularly morbid detail from the newspaper account. While being dragged around by the "instrument," as Burke calls it, choosing a term which still, in 1780, would have carried connotations of torture, Smith "grew black in the face, and the blood forced itself out of his nostrils, his eyes, and his ears" (389). The officers who stood by and watched this happen, he concluded, whether they did so through "neglect, or cruelty," should themselves be subjected to legal proceedings, along with anyone else involved in doing harm to the two convicts (390).In a telling inconsistency, however, not all of the surviving accounts of that unfortunate day concur either on the events themselves or on the question of who should be held accountable. In particular, no other version attributes Smith's death so assuredly to the natural misfortune of his stature-and thus, by extension, to the negligence of the officers overseeing his placement in the pillory. In a story in the Daily Advertiser, for instance, Smith's death has nothing to do with the device at all, having been caused directly by the actions of a bystander: "some Person threw a Stone, and hit the Coachman [Smith] on the forehead, and he immediately dropped to his Knees, and was to all Appearance dead. …

The Unknown Stalin

Abstract: Josef Stalin remains one of the greatest enigmas of modern history. Unflinching, impenetrable, inhuman in his cruelty, bathed in misery himself, he represents to many a very paradigm of evil - perhaps, in his icy rationalism, even more so than Hitler himself. More than a hundred biographies of Stalin have been written since his death in 1953, but this study looks at the torrent of new material unleashed with the opening of the secret Soviet archives when the Union collapsed. The truths extracted from these long-secret archives provide a radically fresh insight into the life and career of one of the major figures of the 20th century.

Theoretical Reflections on Peer Judgments

Abstract: We are all absorbed in a constant struggle to find ourselves. From the time we are born, every experience becomes a piece in the puzzle that may or may not eventually integrate into the whole person. Both society and ourselves play a major role in deciding what kind of people we will be. It is through our interactions with others that we form opinions of ourselves. Throughout my own personal struggle to find myself, society has had an effect on both micro and macro levels. A significant problem in my life arose at about the time I entered middle school. At this point in my life, I began to more than before take into account the opinions and attitudes of others. The situation was escalated by the fact that I became overweight and had to start wearing glasses, both of which caused me to become tremendously self-conscious. My self-consciousness stemmed from my increasing attention to how others thought of me. Now I see how symbolic interaction affected my self-identity formation. It seemed as though all at once I had become the fat, four-eyed girl. For the other children, my weight and the glasses acted as symbols for how they should treat me. They felt that based on these symbols, it was acceptable to treat me with less respect and dignity. This treatment was well illustrated in the movie, Erin Brockovich. When Erin begins working in the lawyer's office, she is not accepted by her co-workers because of her style of dress. Her clothing becomes a symbol for the other workers' cruelty towards her. They ignore her, and are rude and unhelpful to her at every opportunity. However, Erin does not let their negative opinions of her stand in her way, and in the end she earns their respect through her hard work and great accomplishments. As can be seen, there are certain symbols in society, such as weight or provocative clothing, which signal to others the opportunity to judge and to behave in certain ways. According to George Herbert Mead, "Our actions are always engaged with the actions of others, whose responses to what we do send us signals as to their approval or disapproval" (Farganis 159). I also looked toward others for their opinions of me, and then allowed their reactions to gauge how I felt about myself. As is common among children of middle school age, my classmates were quite cruel toward me. This led me to believe that their harsh comments were true, and that I was truly worthless. These events, in turn, triggered the gradual decline of my self-esteem and overall self-worth. As time went on, my conceived notions of others' opinions gradually became a part of me, and came to shape my overall self-concept. As hard as I tried to ignore the cruel comments of others, they eventually became subconsciously embedded inside my mind. This was especially the case when this harsh attitude came from my own significant others. In particular, I can recall one of my cousins who used to derive pure pleasure from making fun of me. This specific cousin was several years older than I, and she was someone whom I had always looked up to and strived to be like. Charles Horton Cooley's "looking-glass self" concept helps explain this. The idea is basically that we judge ourselves based on our perceptions of other people's opinions of us, which in turn, affect our feelings about ourselves. In her article, "Repairing the Soul: Matching Inner with Outer Beauty," Kristy Canfield adds that the looking-glass self, "shapes our ability to contemplate our existence and to project ourselves into the past and future" (Canfield 24). Another concept put forth by Mead is reflexivity, which is defined as "the capacity to use and respond to language, symbols, and thoughts" (Farganis 159). This has to do with how we manipulate our actions in order for them to fit the expectations of others. Mead goes on to state, as quoted earlier, that "Our actions are always engaged with the actions of others, whose responses to what we do send us signals as to their approval or disapproval" (Farganis 159). …

Torture as a Crime under International Law

Abstract: Torture has been widely practiced during the entire recorded history of humankind For example: to obtain information about the enemy or enemy strategies in situations of armed conflict; (1) in criminal justice systems to invite a confession; (2) as a form of punishment; (3) or in a political society as a means of suppressing opposition (4) Torture was not considered illegal in some criminal justice systems '"The torture of a criminal during the course of his trial," wrote Cesare Beccaria, (5) "is a cruelty consecrated by custom in most nations" (6) He went on to explain: It is used with an intent either to make him confess his crime, or to explain some contradictions into which he had been led during his examination, or discover his accomplices, or for some kind of metaphysical and incomprehensible purgation of infamy, or, finally, in order to discover other crimes of which he is not accused, but of which he may be guilty (7) Aristotle, for example, listed tortures--alongside "laws, witnesses, contracts, [and] oaths"--as '"non-technical' means of persuasion" (ie, those besides rhetoric) (8) In elaborating on torture as a means of persuasion, he warned that "people under its compulsion lie just as often, sometimes persistently refusing to tell the truth, sometimes recklessly making a false charge in order to be let off sooner" (9) Elsewhere, Aristotle discussed the proposition that "[e]vidence given under torture is more trustworthy than ordinary testimony but those who are under torture gain by telling the truth, for doing so will bring them the speediest relief from their sufferings" (10) He then argued that others may lie under torture to "escape the suffering of the moment" (11) Given these conflicting responses to torture, one must always evaluate evidence procured under torture for its plausibility or implausibility, reasoned Aristotle (12) In Roman law, it was customary for torture to be applied in order to uncover the commission of a crime (13) However, in The Digest, Justinian listed the opinions of numerous publicists on classical Roman law, including Ulpian, Modestinus, Papinian, and Paul, to illustrate that resort to torture in criminal cases was not unlimited (14) For example: '"[r]ecourse should only be had to the infliction of pain on slaves when the criminal is [already] suspect, and is brought so close to being proved [guilty] by other evidence that the confession of his slaves appears to be the only thing lacking'" (Ulpian); (15) "[a] person who has made a confession on his own account shall not be tortured in a capital case affecting others" (Modestinus); (16) "in a case of stuprum [(unchastity)], slaves are not [to be] tortured [to give evidence] against their master" (Papinian); (17) interrogations under torture were not to be requested in every case, but only if a capital or more serious crime could not be vindicated and investigated in any way other than by torturing slaves (Paul) (18) Under Roman influence, English common law also permitted torture as a means of eliciting a confession or for obtaining evidence from an uncooperative witness (19) Tasswell-Langmead, for example, recorded the case in 1615 of Edmund Peacham, Rector of St George church in Somersetshire who, suspected of seditious conspiracy, "was put to the rack and examined 'before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture'" (20) However, times have changed and today torture is widely condemned (21) It has been described as "a cruel assault upon the defenseless" (22) and as "inherently abhorrent" (23) "[E]ven a murderer," decided Chief Judge Posner, "has a right to be free from torture" (24) Its proscription has indeed come to be recognized as a peremptory norm of general international law ("ius cogens") (25) This essay will seek to define the concept of torture as proclaimed in international law (Part I) and distinguish torture as a crime against humanity and as a war crime (Parts II A and B) …

Resisting the Plague: The French Reactionary Right and Artaud's Theater of Cruelty

Abstract: During a lengthy, hostile divorce from the surrealist circle in 1926, Antonin Artaud reiterated his eschewal of political engagement in the most vigorous terms. The surrealists’ attempt to graft their spiritual revolution onto Marxist materialism was for him a deleterious deviation from the ideological position that, with Artaud’s participation, those gathered around André Breton had developed the previous year. Demanding a reassertion of the surrealist commitment to “total idealism” [idéalisme intégral], Artaud reaffirmed his qualms before all real action: “My scruples are absolute” (1:71, 66).1 Despite his uncompromising stance, Artaud found himself profoundly engaged in the “politics of style.”2 As he began to publish his writings on the theater of cruelty in the early 1930s, he became acutely aware of a “resistance” to his dramaturgical theories. His correspondence reveals that this resistance, to which he repeatedly refers, issued mainly from two sources: the critics at L’action française, the primary mouthpiece of the movement bearing the same name,

The new Hundred Years Wars

Abstract: This article advances the idea that community conflicts, the resurgence of which at the present time is bringing the issue of unrealised group identities to the fore, seem to produce a fiction of never-ending war. The whole of their internal structure appears to induce the protagonists to settle in for the long term and to perpetuate confrontations by constantly re-enacting a sort of primitive and ageless conflict. These new Hundred Years Wars would seem to be generated by three main contributing factors: first, the ritualisation of violent practices which bind enemies together in a pact of reciprocal cruelty; next, the adoption of a rhetorical stance proclaiming that negotiation is impossible and unthinkable, thus enabling each party to present its own struggle as part of the unshakeable defence of the honour of the threatened community; and, lastly, the extension of conflicts by making a habit of division, of hate-filled exhortations and of memory games which cut across each and every kind of social activity, creating a sort of spontaneous apartheid society. It is to be asked whether this shared fantasy of the impossibility of peace might not also ultimately stem from a painful need for recognition.

Cruelty : an analysis of Article 3

Abstract: Torture, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment Proving Violation of Article 3 The Police Prisoners Immigration Medical Treatment The Treatment of Death Row and Long Term Prisoners Children and Young People Physical Integrity Efficient Remedy Appendices