The Depiction of Torture in Jean Améry's Essay "Die Tortur" (PDF)

Scientific Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Public International Law and Human Rights, grade: 1, University of Vienna (Postgraduate Center), course: Human Rights Master, language: English, abstract: In his Essay Die Tortur Améry stresses the insufficiency of language to transfer the extra-linguistic experience of torture into written speech, arguing that qualities of feeling ["Gefühlsqualitäten" ] especially the shattering exposure to torture, remain indescribable and incommensurable. Who attempts to describe the experience of torture operates at the borders of linguistic communicability and runs the risk to get lost in a "hopeless carousel of metaphorical speech" ["hoffnungslosen Karussell der Gleichnisrede" ]. The language employed by the author to recapitulate his own searing interrogation, is reflected-descriptive, analytical and impersonal in outlining the undergone atrocities. Améry, whose Oeuvre often has been defined by the struggle to translate his traumatic experiences into language, "resists the impulse to employ metaphor" as "it would be senseless to try and describe [...] the pain that was inflicted [...]" ["Es wäre ohne jede Vernunft, [...] die mir zugefügten Schmerzen beschreiben zu wollen" ] and as there is no abstraction or converging imagination adequate to depict the cruelty of the reality. In this contiguity Elaine Scarry refers to the "incommunicability of pain" , that is radically expressed in Améry's Essay, when he states that "if someone wants to impart his physical pain, he would be forced to inflict it and thereby become a torturer himself." ["Wer seinen Körperschmerz mit-teilen wollte, wäre darauf gestellt, ihn zufügen zu müssen und damit selbst zum Folterknecht zu werden" ].