Session 2: Violence, Terror and the Shaping of Place Consciousness

Session 2: Violence, Terror & the Shaping of Place Consciousness
Chair: Viktoria Hertling

From Soldier to Torturer? Military Training and Moral Agency
Jessica Wolfendale
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

The practice of institutionalised torture primarily takes place within a military context. Torturers are nearly always soldiers acting under orders. This raises such questions as how obedience to destructive authority is generated, how men and women are trained to become torturers, and how they manage the psychological demands of torture. This paper will examine and critique the moral psychology of obedience to authority within the context of the military profession. I examine and discuss the training methods and moral framework used by the military to inure soldiers to the act of killing. I will also look at both the military rhetoric regarding the profession of arms and the reality of military training and practice, in order to analyse the impact such training has on the moral agency and psychology of soldiers.
I will argue that a major factor in the moral psychology of obedience to authority is the adoption of the moral framework of professionalism. The issue of obedience to destructive authority therefore raises important questions about the assumption that there is a justifiable divide between professional and private morality, and that acts within a professional context have a different moral character to those same acts in a non-professional context.
The military profession also acts as a crucial test for the validity of contemporary theories of professional ethics. If it can be demonstrated that certain theories of professional ethics lend themselves to the institutionalisation of roles that permit extreme violence and the development of psychological traits that diminish the moral agency of professionals, then we have reason to doubt the legitimacy of these theories. Therefore we also gain an insight into the moral and psychological mindset that enables the creation of willing torturers.

A Literature of Terror and Mourning
Kaiama Glover
Assistant Professor, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA

A developing nation known throughout the world for the overwhelming violence of its social and political struggles, the Republic of Haiti has long been marked by bloodshed and brutality.  From the years preceding its seizing of independence from France in 1804 to the present day, Haiti’s history can be read as a narrative of terror and mourning.
As we approach the bicentennial of Haitian independence, it is of the utmost importance that we look at, beyond, and underneath the violence of this country’s socio-political climate to discover the cultural response offered by its citizens – its intellectuals in particular. In effect, an exploration of Haitian literary production reveals the presence of a courageous and persistent discourse that acknowledges, counters, and condemns the unsettling realities of life in Haiti.
Censored, threatened, imprisoned, and even tortured for their espousal of this discourse, Haiti’s authors have committed  to writing – often quite literally – under siege.  These are the individuals whose works will be considered in this essay.  Whether on the island or in exile, such writers as René Depestre, Frankétienne, Emile Ollivier, Jean-Claude Fignolé, and René Philoctète, to name but a few, have been at the forefront of opposition to the country’s successive repressive regimes. From the zombie, to the femme-jardin (“garden woman”), to the Marxist revolutionary, the Haitian novel is peppered with individuals and communities that are at once pitiable victims and unwavering survivors.  This paper will examine these characters in order to elucidate the manner in which certain Haitian writer-intellectuals have chosen to represent Haiti’s endemic violence in their fiction, and what – if any – solutions they propose.

No abstract presently available