Torture and the UK’s “war on asylum”: medical power and the culture of disbelief

When the now ‘iconic’ images of shackled, humiliated and dehumanised detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Iraq were broadcast globally, in the mid-2000s, the relationship between medical power and torture in the “war on terror” was also thrust sharply into focus. Graphic images of coalition troops photographing and posing in front of hooded, naked prisoners forced into a “human pyramid”, and of people made to wear animal collars, indicated a regime in which degradation had a defining role. The photograph of a soldier gloating over the corpse of a man who had died as a result of torture was just one picture of a network of interrogation camps in which detention by coalition forces could be fatal. Yet if there were any expectations that the presence of medical personnel may have checked this violence, these were shattered by the fact that clinicians – in some cases at least – were integral to its practice. «It is now beyond doubt that Armed Forces physicians, psychologists, and medics were active and passive partners in the systematic neglect and abuse of war on terror prisoners», wrote Steven Miles in 2009 (Miles 2009, X). And as he continued, this involved providing interrogators «with medical information to use in setting the nature and degree of physical and psychological abuse during interrogations». It involved monitoring «interrogations to devise ways to break prisoners down or to keep them alive». It involved pathologists holding back death certificates and autopsy reports in order to minimise the number of fatalities or cover up torture-related deaths as deaths by natural causes (Ibid). Procedures including «cramped confinement, dietary manipulation, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding» were among the practices that were «at times (…) legally sanctioned due to medical supervision» in the context of the “war on terror”, according to Hoffman (2011, 1535). He continued to suggest that doctors are not just important to «modern torture methods», they are «irreplaceable». In this context, the “war on terror” is no aberration. As the revolutionary psychoanalyst and philosopher Frantz Fanon documented in 1959, for example, certain medical practitioners had an integral role in the military occupation of Algeria, and «There are, for instance, psychiatrists … known to numerous prisoners», he suggested, «who have given electric shock treatments to the accused and have questioned them during the waking phase, which is characterized by a certain confusion, a relaxation of resistance, a disappearance of the person's defences.» (Fanon 1959/1965, 138). Indeed, in his analysis of the Algerian revolution, he discussed how resistance to and struggles over the meanings of medical power were integral to the revolution itself. However, while the role of medical power in the practice of torture has been subjected to sustained critique in the context of the “war on terror”, what follows examines the relationship between medical power and torture in the context of what has been depicted – metaphorically – as another (although to some extents related) “war”: the “war” on asylum. According to the UNHCR (2017, 3), between 5 and 35 per cent of those asylum seekers who have been granted refugee status have survived torture. And focusing on the UK as a case study, this chapter examines the institutional and legal structures prohibiting torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, particularly as they apply to those subject to immigration control in this context. But further, it also examines the ideological and political conditions within which claims by those seeking asylum that they have been subjected to torture prior to arrival can be (and have been) ignored, downplayed and denied. It examines how medical expertise has frequently been undermined in the asylum process when this expertise is utilised to add weight to asylum seekers’ claims to have experienced torture. It examines how there have been attempts to narrow the definition of torture in ways which exclude people from the protections to which torture survivors are entitled. But it also explores the ways in which segments of the medical profession have been complicit in riding roughshod over existing safeguards to prevent further harm to those who have experienced torture, thus potentially compounding its effects. In particular, it examines claims that in certain contexts clinicians have administered dangerous “care” in order to ensure the removal of people from the UK, despite them claiming that they – or their family members – face serious harm and persecution on arrival as a result of this. In a historical discussion of medical involvement in torture, Giovanni Maio (2001, 1609) has noted that from its earliest incarnations one of the features of torture has been its use as an «oppressive instrument used in the preservation of power». Furthermore, whilst methods of torture have certainly «developed», and continue to do so, he argues, this «function» of torture is «especially relevant today». This chapter argues that the (mis)treatment of those in the UK who say they have been tortured, preserves and is bound up with a particular manifestation of state power: the aims, rationale and dictates of immigration control. Its claims are perhaps much more mundane than the forms of direct medical complicity in torture alluded to above. But they are nonetheless important. For it is argued that the acts of omission and commission documented in this chapter expose the tensions between the rights of certain “categories” of migrants to be afforded adequate clinical care on the one hand, and the goals and aims of immigration control itself on the other. This poses profound questions about the functions of clinical care and the ethical duties, responsibilities and obligations of clinicians, it is suggested. But as this chapter also crucially explores, this is a form of power that many within the medical profession have historically challenged, and continue to do so

Censorship of Translated Fiction in Nazi Germany

This paper outlines the processes of censorship affecting translation under Nazi rule. Despite a markedly suspicious attitude towards translated fiction, the Nazi regime did not simply eliminate it. In fact, far from collapsing in 1933, the publication of translated fiction actually increased, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of all fiction, until the outbreak of war. However, if in purely quantitative terms translation flourished, the figures mask deep qualitative shifts: Jewish or anti-Nazi authors, translators and publishers disappeared; safe-selling genres came to dominate the market; and source-language preferences changed. These shifts were clearly the outcome of aggressive state measures, both classic “negative” censorship—the banning of literary producers and products or the imposition of “voluntary” self-regulation—and the energetic promotion of approved forms of translation. At the same time, more detailed study suggests that even for non-approved forms, the influence of state control was not always so clear-cut. In the case of the translated detective fiction of the time, censorship in translation was an amalgam of state intervention, pre-emptive filtering, selective readings of the source genre’s ambivalences, and the “normal” pressures of the book market. Even in this totalitarian context of extreme literary control, it remains difficult to define the borders of “translation censorship” as such.Cette étude décrit les processus de censure qui touchaient la traduction sous la domination nazie. En dépit d’une attitude résolument soupçonneuse à l’égard des traductions de fiction, le régime nazi ne les a pas simplement éliminées. En fait, loin de chuter en 1933, la publication de traductions de fiction s’accrut même jusqu’à la guerre, à la fois en termes absolus et proportionnellement à la publication des oeuvres de fiction en général. Toutefois, si en termes purement quantitatifs la traduction prospère, les chiffres masquent de profondes modifications qualitatives : les auteurs, traducteurs et éditeurs juifs et anti-nazis disparurent ; les genres sûrs à la vente en arrivèrent à dominer le marché et les préférences pour ce qui est des langues sources changèrent. Ces glissements provenaient indubitablement des mesures radicales de l’État, à la fois la censure « négative » — l’interdiction de produits littéraires ou de producteurs, ou l’imposition d’une auto-régulation « volontaire » — et la promotion énergique de formes de traduction approuvées. En même temps, une étude plus détaillée suggère que, même pour les formes non approuvées, l’influence du contrôle de l’État n’était pas toujours très nette. À l’époque, dans le cas des traductions de romans policiers, la censure à la traduction était un amalgame d’intervention de l’État, de filtrage préventif, de lectures sélectives du genre d’origine et de pressions normales du marché éditorial. Même dans ce contexte totalitaire d’extrême contrôle littéraire, il reste difficile de définir les frontières de la censure sur la traduction en tant que telle

Translation and the History of Fascism

Introduction to the volume by the two coeditors in which they discusses the contribution that the study of translation can make to research on Fascism. The authors argue that Translation History can shed significant light on areas such as publishing under fascism and its interaction with fascist cultural policies, fascist censorship, and the relationship between fascist cultural policy and its politics of expansion and racism

Translation in Fascist Systems: Italy, Germany, Spain A Colloquium

The one-day conference was planned as a forum for the analysis and comparison of translation publishing policies and practices in the fascist eras in Germany, Italy and Spain. The aim was to contribute to the historical study of fascism; to contribute to descriptive Translation Studies by providing concrete and detailed accounts of translation policy and practice in a very particular historical context; and to engage in interdisciplinary discussion between historically oriented Translation Studies and culturally oriented historical studies. Around thirty to forty people attended the colloquium over the course of the day, around twenty of them participating in the afternoon round table. The day was divided into empirical presentations in the morning and interdisciplinary discussion in the afternoon. The morning presentations outlined the institutional context and publishing practice of the respective regimes, as follows: - Chris Rundle (University of Bologna) on translation in Fascist Italy - Kate Sturge (Aston University, UK) on translation in Nazi Germany - Jeroen Vandaele (KU Leuven, Belgium) on translation in Franco's Spain - Rafael Lozano Miralles (University of Bologna) on the literary relations of Spain and Italy in the Fascist regime The afternoon was introduced by Professor Patrizia Dogliani (University of Bologna), who set out the parallels and divergences she saw arising from the three country studies. She put forward a comparative perspective and opened up a range of questions which were then taken up by the presenters and members of the audience. A wide range of issues were discussed and there was strong participation from the audience, including a scholar from Portugal who provided a useful complement to the Spanish case

Between Consensus and the Dissolution of Boundaries: On the Transculturality of Communicative Action

Bei diesem Beitrag handelt es sich um Larisa Schippels Vorlesung zum Antritt der Professur für Transkulturelle Kommunikation, gehalten im Rahmen des Hieronymustages am Zentrum für Translationswissenschaft der Universität Wien, 4. Oktober 2011. Der Text ist unveröffentlicht, enthält aber aus Sicht der Redaktion grundlegende Überlegungen zur transkulturellen Betrachtung von Phänomenen der Translation, die wir so wiedergeben wollten, wie sie vor zehn Jahren vorgetragen wurden.This contribution is Larisa Schippel's inaugural lecture for the professorship of Transcultural Communication, given at St Jerome's Day events at the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Vienna on October 4, 2011. The translation was drafted shortly thereafter. The text has not been published yet, but is reproduced here in its original form, because the editors think it includes noteworthy considerations for a transcultural perspective of translation phenomena

Translation Under Fascism

Growing out of our research on translation policy in two fascist regimes, Italy and Germany, the book will draw together work on the role of literary exchange \u2013 its censorship, its promotion, and its subversive potential \u2013 within fascist political systems. Opening with historical overviews of literary policy and the place of translation in the Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese regimes, the book then offers a series of detailed case studies and a thorough examination of the methodological issues raised by bringing together the disciplines of history and translation. It will contribute to the cultural history of twentieth-century fascisms by highlighting translation\u2019s role as an intersection of ideological and economic anxieties and as a prime target for attempts at cultural engineering; it will contribute to the growing discipline of Translation Studies by offering historically grounded work on the multiple and complex roles that translation has played in contexts of political conflict. The book will present new research and, via specially commissioned essays, give access to existing research projects which at present are either scattered or unavailable in English