Joseph Pugliese - State Violence and the Execution of Law: Biopolitcal Caesurae of Torture, Black Sites, Drones

State Violence and the Execution of Law stages a provocative analysis of how the biopolitical divide between human and animal has played a fundamental role in enabling state violence, including torture, secret imprisonment and killing-at-adistance via drones. Analyzing the complex ways in which the United States government deploys law in order to consolidate and further imperial relations of power, Pugliese tracks the networks that enable the diffusion and normalization of the states monopoly of violence both in the US and in an international context. He demonstrates how networks of state violence are embedded within key legal institutions, military apparatuses, civilian sites, corporations, carceral architectures, and advanced technologies. The author argues that the exercise of state violence, as unleashed by the war on terror, has enmeshed the subjects of the Global South within institutional and discursive structures that position them as non-human animals that can be tortured, killed and disappeared with impunity. Drawing on poststructuralist, critical race and whiteness, and critical legal theories, the book is transdisciplinary in its approach and value. It will be invaluable to university students and scholars in Critical Legal and Socio-Legal Studies, Cultural Studies, Race and Ethnicity Studies, International Politics, and Postcolonial Studies.

Joseph Pugliese is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney. Recent publications include the edited collection Transmediterranean: Diasporas, Histories, Geopolitical Spaces and the monograph Biometrics: Bodies, Technologies, Biopolitics which was short-listed for the Surveillance Studies Book Prize 2010.

Law and the Postcolonial: Ethics, Politics, & Economy

Series edited by

Prof Denise Ferreira da Silva

Queen Mary University of London

Dr Mark A. Harris

La Trobe University

Dr Brenna Bhandar

University of Kent

Law and the Postcolonial: Ethics, Politics, & Economy seeks to expand the critical scope of racial, postcolonial, and global theory and analysis, focusing on how the global juridico-economic apparatus has been, and continues to be, shaped by the Colonial and the Racial structurings of power. It includes works that seek to move beyond the previous privileging of culture in considerations of racial and postcolonial subjectivity to offer a more comprehensive engagement with the legal, economic and moral issues of the global present.

Titles in this series include:

State Violence and the Execution of Law

Biopolitical caesurae of torture, black sites, drones

Joseph Pugliese

First published 2013

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

A GlassHouse Book

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2013 Joseph Pugliese

The right of Joseph Pugliese to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Pugliese, Joseph, 1959

State violence and the execution of law : torture, black sites, drones / Joseph Pugliese.

p. cm.

1. Rule of law. 2. Violence (Law) 3. Implied powers (Constitutional law) 4. Biopolitics. 5. War (International law) 6. Torture (International law) 7. ViolenceUnited States. 8. Drone aircraft. 9. Biological warfare. 10. United StatesMilitary policy. I. Title.

K 3171. P84 2013

303.6dc23

2012032649

ISBN 9780415529747 (hbk)

ISBN 9780203597743 (ebk)

Typeset in Baskerville

by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Im profoundly grateful to Denise Ferreira da Silva and her fellow editors, Brenna Bhandar and Mark Harris, for encouraging me to bring together a body of work on state violence and to shape it into a book. Denises revolutionary work on law, race and state violence has been inspirational to the production of this book.

Penny Pether has, over the space of two decades, supported my work with a passionate commitment that has always translated into practice. My thanks to her and to David Caudill, Peter Goodrich and Bill McNeil for all their support.

In the early stages of the book, Constance Owen, a US citizen, offered her services as a research assistant because of her deep level of critical engagement with issues of social justice in the context of the war on terror. I am greatly indebted to her phenomenal energy, discerning eye and brilliant research assistance. Constance dedicates her work on this project to the memory of her late grand-father, Donald F. Jones, the illustrious scientist whose own research was oriented by a commitment to social good.

This book is founded on the experiences and testimonies of the detainees. From the inception, their harrowing testimonies and calls for justice have driven my writing of this book. The writing of this book has also been critically dependent on the work of a number of individuals and organizations that have collectively contested the prerogative of the state to keep many of its dubious practices from public scrutiny and accountability. My thanks to Andy Worthington for his invaluable Guantanamo Files; Bradley Manning and Wiki Leaks; the American Civil Liberties Union; Democracy Now!; and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The thinking and writing of this book was enabled by a community of scholars and activists that I am privileged to know. My thanks to: Goldie Osuri, for her political solidarity; Lara Palombo for her many acts of generosity; and Rustom Bharucha for his affirmation of my textual politics. Thanks also to: Uncle Ray Jackson, my colleagues in the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University, James Brown and Pat Sant, Susan Stryker, Nikki Sullivan and the Somatechnics research group, Maria Giannacopoulos, Holly Randall-Moon, Sherene Razack, Juliet Rogers, Sue Saltmarsh, Nan Seuffert, Kieran Tranter and Dinesh Wadiwel.

Special thanks to Suvendrini Perera: for her sustaining generosity; for the gift of our dialogues over the years; and for a body of work that has been a constant point of reference for me.

Im grateful to Raffaella and Larry Johnson for their unconditional support. My mother and late father taught me the inestimable value of nu core sciancatu. Sebastian transcends his own trauma and rails passionately against the violence of anthropocentrism. In the face of a litany of tribulations, Trish has been there for me at every turn; her care and support has seen me through: this book would not have been possible without her.

A number of sections in this book were previously published and have been reproduced with permission: Abu Ghraibs Shadow Archives,