Athey, S: Torture in the National Security Imagination

"Now that the spectacular images of U.S. torture under the auspices of the 'war on terror' have faded, mainstream media and, indeed, scholarly debates have turned to other manifestations of U.S. state violence: against Black Lives Matter protestors, climate activists, First Nations peoples, and in the multiple theaters of global war. By widening the lens on torture within the post-9/11 U.S. regime to illuminate the imaginaries that animated it, Stephanie Athey insists that we recognize it as a moment in a larger narrative of ongoing and multidimensional imperialist violence."-Danielle Celermajer, author of The Prevention of Torture: An Ecological Approach

"Offering a highly original discussion of the role of torture in the historical development of American national security, Stephanie Athey provides a new approach to a subject that has seen more than a decade of sustained popular and critical commentary. With innovative claims, Athey traces the evolution of torture lore as a long-standing justification for the making of American empire."-Benjamin Meiches, author of The Politics of Annihilation: A Genealogy of Genocide