TY - JOUR
T1 - Alternative Sites of Accountability for Torture: The Publication of War on Terror Books as 'Memory-Justice'
AU - Banham, Cynthia
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - This article examines alternative sites of accountability for torture carried out in the war on terror, where the Obama Administration refused to engage in official accountability. It is concerned with a less examined feature of civil society's efforts at seeking accountability: The publication of key documents from the war on terror as books. I focus on two, one based on a congressional report on torture and the other on the diary of a current Guantánamo Bay detainee. I argue that through publishing these already existing texts as books, civil society actors helped amplify, circulate, and make more permanent evidence of post-9.11 torture. In doing so they contributed to the creation of a 'counterpublic', reforming what is publicly thinkable about the torture policies of the Bush Administration, and achieved a form of 'memory-justice', morally grounding past crimes in the present and taking responsibility as a political community for righting past wrongs.
AB - This article examines alternative sites of accountability for torture carried out in the war on terror, where the Obama Administration refused to engage in official accountability. It is concerned with a less examined feature of civil society's efforts at seeking accountability: The publication of key documents from the war on terror as books. I focus on two, one based on a congressional report on torture and the other on the diary of a current Guantánamo Bay detainee. I argue that through publishing these already existing texts as books, civil society actors helped amplify, circulate, and make more permanent evidence of post-9.11 torture. In doing so they contributed to the creation of a 'counterpublic', reforming what is publicly thinkable about the torture policies of the Bush Administration, and achieved a form of 'memory-justice', morally grounding past crimes in the present and taking responsibility as a political community for righting past wrongs.
U2 - 10.1163/15718123-01702003
DO - 10.1163/15718123-01702003
M3 - Article
SN - 1567-536X
VL - 17
SP - 378
EP - 397
JO - International Criminal Law Review
JF - International Criminal Law Review
IS - 2
ER -