Reshaping Subjects through Torture: State Power and the Production of Fragmented Minds Available to Purchase

Reading key social scientific scholars of torture alongside literary theory and psychological studies of survivors provides important insights into how the long-term impacts of torture, including the fragmentation of identity and selfhood, can be seen as strategic tools of statecraft. In this conception, torture serves as a mode of survivor demobilization that continues after the direct experience of torture, thus allowing the influence of state discipline to extend insidiously beyond its immediate reach. Studying the lasting functions of torture from both psychological and geopolitical perspectives can expand the social scientific analysis of torture and provide a fuller understanding of its ongoing use by modern states.