The Wound And The Witness: The Rhetoric Of Torture

By Jennifer R. Ballengee

Explores the rhetorical functions of torture and the witnessing of torture in both classical texts and contemporary contexts.

The Wound and the Witness offers a historically grounded approach to an urgent contemporary problem: the persistence of torture in Western culture. Drawing upon ancient Greek and Roman texts, as well as contemporary media events, Jennifer R. Ballengee explores the spectacle of torture as a persuasive device. She suggests that both torture and the witnessing of torture are forms of polemical writing, carried out on the body. The analysis combines close reading and philological study with a materialist cultural approach to ancient Greek theater, early Christian accounts of martyrdom, and recent political controversies over the interrogation tactics in the U.S. government-run Guant namo and Abu Ghraib prisons. By incorporating key classical texts by Sophocles, Achilles Tatius, and Prudentius, the author demonstrates how deeply the ancient literature resonates with contemporary issues of the body, rhetoric, and the spectacle of pain.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1438424914
• ISBN13: 9781438424910
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.1"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher