The Report and the Task of Critique: Torture, Exposure, and the Spectacle of Accountability

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Bob Brecher and Mani Sharpe for their perceptive and generous notes on prior drafts of this essay.

Notes

1 The findings and conclusions of the report state, in short, that the torture program was brutal and operationally ineffective, that the CIA lied about this repeatedly (including to Congress, the White House, and the public), that the CIA continually resisted both democratic oversight and external and internal accountability procedures, and that the torture program damaged the USA’s standing in the international community.

2 Dershowitz is known for his drastically right-wing legal scholarship, which defends (among other things) torture, Israeli settler colonialism, and the presidency of Donald Trump. He has also published three novels: The Advocate’s Devil (1995), Just Revenge (1999), and The Trials of Zion (2010). The Trials of Zion features a ‘ticking bomb torture’ scene in its closing movement.

3 The podcast can be accessed at https://www.topic.com/the-report-podcast.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alex Adams

Alex Adams is an independent scholar based in North East England. He writes widely on securitization, with a focus on the representation of torture and other imperial violence. He has published two books, Political Torture in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2016) and How to Justify Torture (Repeater, 2019), in addition to many peer-reviewed articles in journals including Signs, Journal of Film and Video, and The Lion and the Unicorn. He is currently writing a huge book on Godzilla.