Literature and Medicine

This paper examines how comedy is used in torture to disregard the suffering of the victims and how narratives about torture make use of comedy for the same purpose. After situating the current use of torture by the United States in the larger narrative context that provided the milieu for the resurgence of torture, the paper focuses on how the comic dimensions of torture are not only essential for perpetuating the torture but also instrumental within the torture, as seen in the photographs from and subsequent polemics about Abu Ghraib. The paper ends with a discussion of recent medical narratives about torture.