Transnational torture : law, violence, and state power in the United States and India / Jinee Lokaneeta.

Originally published by New York University Press.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-279) and index.

Introduction : do the ghosts of Leviathan linger on? Law, violence, and torture in liberal democracies -- Law's struggle with violence : ambivalence in the "routine" : jurisprudence of interrogations in the United States -- "Being helplessly civilized leaves us at the mercy of the beast" : post-9/11 discourses on torture in the United States -- Torture in the TV show 24 : circulation of meanings -- Jurisprudence on torture and interrogations in India -- Contemporary states of exception : extraordinary laws and interrogation in India -- Conclusion : unraveling the exception : torture in liberal democracies.

Evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and harsh interrogation techniques at Guantánamo Bay beg the question: has the "war on terror" forced liberal democracies to rethink their policies and laws against torture? Transnational Torture focuses on the legal and political discourses on torture in India and the United States, two common-law based constitutional democracies, to theorize the relationship between law, violence, and state power in liberal democracies. Analyzing about one hundred landmark Supreme Court cases on torture in India and the United States, memos and popular imagery of torture, the author compellingly demonstrates that even before recent debates on the use of torture in the war on terror, the laws of interrogation were much more ambivalent about the infliction of excess pain and suffering than most political and legal theorists have acknowledged. Rather than viewing the recent policies on interrogation as anomalous or exceptional, she effectively argues that efforts to accommodate excess violence, a constantly negotiated process, are long standing features of routine interrogations in both the United States and India, concluding that the infliction of excess violence is more central to democratic governance than is acknowledged in western jurisprudenc