Torture, Notions of ‘Justice’, and Petty Sovereigns

Abstract

This chapter asks the questions of why and how police personnel engage in torture and how such practices impact and shape the self-understanding of those who enact the violence of the state. Drawing on ethnographic field-material including long conversations with police personnel, the chapter argues that illegal violence is not always carried out by hiding it or by renaming it as legal force. Violence is often sustained due to its glorification as a way of delivering ‘justice’ beyond the liberal-constitutional model. By deciding to torture and kill beyond the limits of law, police personnel display operation of a sovereign power at the locales. Torture in police stations is so routine, that they are often used merely for impressing spectators. At another level the chapter also discusses how the practices of torture are produced as ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ at the same time.