Twisted Words: Torture and Liberalism in Imperial Britain [Kietas viršelis]

"Analyzes canonical novels by George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, and George Meredith as well as lesser-known fiction and historical documents via critical terrorism studies and political, legal, and phenomenological theory to establish how the Victorians ushered in our modern definition of torture"--

Anderson examines torture in fiction, periodicals, and government documents of the British Empire during the latter half of the 19th century. Placing acts of torture and words about torture in the context of changing definitions of citizenship and human rights, she argues that torture-as a technique of state terrorism-evolved in relation to 19th-century liberalism, conflating the traditional definition of exceptional acts of cruelty with systemic, banal, or everyday violence. She rethinks torture as a means of reclaiming an embodied citizenship, and demonstrates how the Victorians ushered in the modern definition of torture. Annotation ©2022 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Twisted Words: Torture and Liberalism in Imperial Britain examines torture across the fiction, periodicals, and government documents of the British Empire in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Placing acts of torture and words about torture in relation to changing definitions of citizenship and human rights, Katherine Judith Anderson argues that torture—as a technique of state terrorism—evolved in relation to nineteenth-century liberalism, combining the traditional definition of exceptional acts of cruelty with systemic, banal, or everyday violence. Analyzing canonical novels by George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, and George Meredith alongside an impressive array of lesser-known fiction through the lenses of critical terrorism studies and political, legal, and phenomenological theory, Anderson rethinks torture as a mode of reclaiming an embodied citizenship and demonstrates how the Victorians ushered in our modern definition of torture. Furthermore, she argues that torture is foundational to Western modernity, since liberalism was, and continues to be, dependent on state-sanctioned––and at times state-sponsored—torture, establishing parallels between Victorian liberal thought and contemporary (neo)imperialism and global politics.

Applies critical terrorism studies to fiction by Eliot, Trollope, and others to argue that Victorians ushered in our modern definition of torture as a tool of the state.