The Subject of Torture

The Subject of Torture

Psychoanalysis and Biopolitics in Television and Film

  • Author: Neroni, Hilary
  • Publisher: Columbia University Press
  • ISBN: 9780231170703
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780231539142
  • Place of publication:  New York , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2015
  • Month: May
  • Language: English
Considering representations of torture in such television series as 24, Alias, and Homeland; the documentaries Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007), and Standard Operating Procedure (2008); and "torture porn" feature films from the Saw and Hostel series, Hilary Neroni unites aesthetic and theoretical analysis to provide a unique portal into theorizing biopower and its relation to the desiring subject. Her work ultimately showcases film and television studies' singular ability to expose and potentially disable the fantasies that sustain torture and the regimes that deploy it.
  • Table of Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Confronting the Abu Ghraib Photographs
  • 1. Torture, Biopower, and the Desiring Subject
  • 2. The Nonsensical Smile of the Torturer in Post-9/11 Documentary Films
  • 3. Torture Porn and the Desiring Subject in Hostel and Saw
  • 4. 24, Jack Bauer, and the Torture Fantasy
  • 5. The Biodetective Versus the Detective of the Real in Zero Dark Thirty and Homeland
  • 6. Alias and the Fictional Alternative to Torture
  • Notes
  • Index

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