As I braced myself for what promised to be a very intense Rose Cafe, I thought I would reflect a little bit about my stance on torture. Just as Dr. Cheesman said at some point, you cannot enter any academic work pretending that you are not biased at all, so I figure it would be good to start with my own biases toward the subject. My stance on torture is not exceptionally nuanced. I hate it. I hate it as a concept, as a practice, how it is portrayed and glorified in movies, and most of all how so many people see it as a topic that is up for debate because in my mind, there should be no debate when it comes to torture. Like I said, whole lot of bias, not a lot of nuance. So coming from that mindset, I was very interested in going to this Rose Cafe to try to get a more nuanced, academic perspective on a topic about which I had very strong feelings but very cursory knowledge. I was delighted to hear from both Dr. Cheesman and Pornpen Khongkachonkiet and I think the conversation really worked to show how Dr. Cheesman’s theoretical, academic approach fits into Ms. Khongkachonkiet’s practical, activist work and vice versa. Overall I think it was an excellent cafe on a vital, if intense, subject.

I would be very interested to investigate the phenomenon of torture more, not just as a tool of the state or of the military (which I understand to be very modern institutions), but how torture has existed as a human phenomenon across time and space. Dr. Cheesman mentioned this briefly when he discussed how there is a perception that torture has decreased since the Middle Ages when in reality it has just gotten “cleaner”. I think by looking at Dr. Cheesman’s theoretical framework for the implications and motivations for torture at the institutional level, it may be possible to then ask the question “Why is torture even a phenomenon in the first place?” This very broad question may get into some sociological/psychological/anthropological areas that aren’t entirely relevant to either Dr. Cheesman’s or Pornpen Khongkachonkiet’s work, but coming from my little corner of existence it is an important one because in many ways I still cannot wrap my mind around it. I found it exceptionally interesting when Dr. Cheesman was discussion how the question “Does torture work?” only serves to garner the answer “Yes.” My followup question would be “What then does one mean by ‘work’?” because there seems to be an awful lot of evidence that in terms of torture as an interrogation tool used to gain information, torture does not “work”. But perhaps that assumes interrogation is the only motive behind torture in the first place, diverting the attention from more pressing questions like “Who does torture serve and how effective is it as serving them?” From the talk, I gathered that as an interrogation tool it may not be effective, but as a tool of the state/military to establish or maintain power and control it is very effective. In that regard it does “work”. So I would be very interesting in investigating further the politics of the questions we ask when it comes to torture and what questions we maybe should be asking instead.