#sironi

C) Do you think it's possible for a mass murderer/torturer character to have a realistic, satisfying redemption arc? Do you know any media that's pulled it off believably? Thank you so much for taking the time to read/answer this if you do! And for this excellent resource!

-

The most accessible sources that cover this are O’Mara’s Why Torture Doesn’t Work (good grounding, start with him), Rejali’s Torture and Democracy and the appendices to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth where he describes treating two torturers.

 The most current research is about 600 pages of print on demand untranslated French. If you’re fluent in French (I am not and lock down etc has got in the way of me getting this translated) Sironi Comment devient-on tortionnaire?

 Broadly speaking the symptoms appear to be the same as those survivors and witnesses develop.

 And I will go into this in more depth later but keep in mind there is not anywhere near enough research on torturers for us to be entirely sure about most of this. I’m working with the best information we have right now.

 The other two questions are subjective and sort of complicated. By definition a lot of this is going to be my opinion because well that’s what you’re asking for.

 I think we need to be really careful about describing torturers as ‘victims’.

 Yes they’re put in this situation by social structures beyond their control. It is not their fault that they weren’t given training or support in their job. It’s also not their fault that we have this global message that violence is effective or that so many workplaces are unnecessarily pressured/stressful. Most of the time they are drawn in to abusing others because of the social groups and structures within the organisation they join.

 Oversight (with a drive to eradicate torture), funding, training and clear consistent messages about the right way to handle difficult situations would probably prevent most cases of torture.

 This does not change the fact that on an individual level each of them chose to hurt other people.

 Some of them will have made that choice understanding there was a threat to their own safety if they did not. Some of them will have made that choice just because it was what everyone else was doing. Some of them genuinely believe what they did was the ‘right’ decision at the time.

 They still made that choice. And given that we have records of people in similar positions refusing, even when it put them at risk of attack or death, I don’t have a lot of sympathy with the choice torturers made.

 The fact I’m a pacifist factors into this. Consider my biases.

 Torturers typically show a very low understanding of the impact their actions have had on other people.

 They might regret their actions but this is typically framed in a very self-centred way. They usually don’t express more then cursory regard for the victims. They regret it because they’re suffering now, because they have nightmares, because they can’t keep a job. And oh it’s all so unfair.

 I don’t know why this is the case. But it’s a feature Sironi described in interviews about her work. And I’ve seen it over and over again in interviews with torturers.

 Yes torturers suffer. The symptoms they develop are terrible and have a lasting impact on their lives. They typically can’t hold down jobs and struggle to re-integrate into society in any meaningful fashion.

 And yes I believe they should be treated. I believe that anyone with a disease or condition which requires treatment should have access to care and treatment. Whoever they are. Whatever they did.

 I believe that as fellow human beings torturers are entitled to a degree of compassion. When I say that torture and mistreatment are wrong I mean it. My position doesn’t change just because the theoretical victim is a former torturer.

 I do not think that treatment and compassion should be dependant on a person being suitably victimised. For me the only thing it depends on is their need and their humanity. In the literal physical sense of them being a human.

 But we tend to think of ‘victim’ as a simple category that doesn’t overlap with mass murderers.

 And I don’t believe the position of torturers is that simple.

 Especially when so few of them are charged. Torture trials are rare. Convictions are rare. And sentences are short.

 And their victims deserve justice too.

 I feel conflicted about calling torturers ‘victims’ because of this complex reality. And because in fiction we have a tendency to focus on the torturers prioritising their voices over the survivors. I feel like presenting torturers as simple victims of society could risk adding to that.

 For me the focus has always got to be the survivors.

 And I think all of this feeds into how we handle redemption arcs.

 I don’t think that writing redemption arcs for villains, even torturers or mass murderers is ‘wrong’. In fact I think that it can be a really good idea. Showing how toxic the environments these people are in is a good thing. Puncturing the way it’s romanticised is a good thing. And showing a way out of it, even if it’s imagined, is not a bad thing.

 But if we’re going to do that in our stories then I think we need to think about what redemption means and in whose eyes the character is redeemed.

 There’s also a small problem: we don’t really know what recovery for torturers looks like.

 There isn’t enough research on them. Partly because of lack of interest but partly because the low conviction rates means sample sizes are small. We’re talking about a limited number of individuals who are jailed and we can’t really ‘prove’ that individuals who weren’t convicted were torturers. We don’t really know what the long term outcomes are, what treatments might be effective or- Much of anything.

 Studies on torturers are typically based on very small numbers of individuals. (For a long time Fanon’s work was the only example of a mental health professional talking about torturers specifically. He saw two of them.) They are not statistically sound. And a lot of resources were simply journalists or mental health professionals compiling notes on the handful of individuals they talked to.

 Everything I say about torturers is based on things like interviews, a handful of studies that have flaws and anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately as of right now it’s the best we’ve got.

 Personally I don’t think there’s enough research on torture generally. Or enough attempts to collate relevant research from other fields. But that’s a rant for another day.

 Let’s get back to that central question: what does redemption mean?

 I think that it’s pretty easy to write a character changing for the better. You can build up the character’s level of insight into what they’re doing/did over the course of the story. You can show them choosing to stop. You can show them shifting to oppose their former allies.

 But bundled up in the idea of a redemption arc is this: is it enough? And who is it enough for?

 I don’t think survivors should be obliged to forgive former torturers. I also don’t think they’re likely to interact positively.

 I’ve talked about this now and again when asked about the difference between legally defined torture and abuse. Because of the organised and widespread nature of legally defined torture there are usually communities of survivors. And communities that are collectively moving through a recovery process because even those people who weren’t directly attacked are likely to be witnesses, carers and relatives or friends of survivors.

 These things echo down generations.

 Cyprus gained independence from the British in 1960, my father is too young to have any real memory of the violence during the colonial period. But he referenced it in arguments with my English mother during my childhood. There are people throughout China today who won’t buy anything Japanese because of Japanese war crimes there during World War 2. There are people who won’t eat fish from the Black Sea, because the bodies of their ancestors were thrown into that sea during a genocide over a hundred years ago.

 I know that as a both a Greek Cypriot and an English person there are people all over the world who will not want anything to do with me based on what my people have done to theirs. And the fact I wasn’t alive at the time does not really factor into it.

 What I’m trying to illustrate here is that this is much bigger, broader and more complex then individual acts of forgiveness.

 Survivors are a highly varied group of individuals. And each torturer can have thousands or tens of thousands of victims. Expecting each impacted individual, and any witnesses and all their family members and friends, to forgive these people is… let’s say ‘unlikely’.

 So does redemption require forgiveness from the wounded party? Is there any possible action that can atone for the sheer scale of these atrocities?

 If we play a simple number game causing this level of harm can be achieved in months or years, but saving the equivalent number of lives takes decades of skilled, dedicated work. If we look at concepts like wergild or jail as ‘paying your debt to society’ then how do we measure something like torture where the numbers are so big?

 I haven’t seen a piece of fiction seriously tackle these questions. But then again I also haven’t actively looked for that fiction.

 I feel like a lot of fictional redemption arcs judge a character to be sufficiently redeemed based on audience sympathy and the main cast forgiving the character. They don’t typically go on to broaden the scope of the narrative and question whether any one else impacted by the former villain’s actions also sees the character as redeemed.

 One of my stories has a former torturer as a major character and I think they are a sympathetic character in many ways. I think that my readers would empathise with them through a lot of the story (which takes place decades after they stopped torturing).

 They’re a mentor figure to some of the younger cast members. They’ve acted as a protector to them and taught the younger generation a lot about the minority culture they themselves are from. And they do genuinely care about these people that they helped to raise, consistently sacrificing to protect these ‘kids’. (The ‘kids’ are 30s-20s at the time of the story.)

 But they’re also incredibly self centred. They don’t really interact with or have a lot of sympathy for the people they hurt. And while this particular family loves and forgives them society at large views them as a monster. Albeit one that is now leashed.

 Is this a redemption story? Is this character redeemed? I genuinely don’t know. In fact that’s part of my interest in writing the story: trying to work out if there is a point, as this character grows, develops and helps others, when I believe they’ve done ‘enough’.

 I think that redemption means different things for different people. A satisfying redemption story is different for different people. And if we can disagree so strongly about it with much simpler, smaller scale crimes then where does that leave us with torture?

 There isn’t a simple answer or a one-size-fits-all writing solution. There can’t be.

 My approach is to try and use the story to see if I can find an answer. Even if it’s only a limited one. For me the story itself is a forum for exploring human complexity and difficult ethical questions.

 I don’t think we have a good solution for how to deal with these people in reality yet. But I do hold out hope that a good solution is possible. Fiction is an arena where we can safely explore possible solutions.

 I guess in the end I’m not sure if there’s any story or arc that will work for everyone. I don’t think there are any hard rules for writing anything and I don’t think there’s ever a way to please everyone.

 Redemption and forgiveness are complicated topics. I think we do a much better job when we engage with that complexity then when we assume a character just has to do a, b and c in order to achieve it.

 When you consider someone to be truly redeemed is an ethical question that I can’t answer for you. I don’t think I should. The chances are you’ll know when you think your character has done enough.

 Just be open to the fact that it won’t be enough for everyone. Consider reflecting that with the characters, because that can make for truly powerful moments.

 In Midnight’s Children Shiva never forgives Saleem, even though Saleem isn’t responsible for Shiva ‘losing’ his life and family because they were both infants at the time. And damn there are a lot of flaws in the movie adaptation but that scene between them in the jail, when Saleem throws that in Shiva’s face hits hard. It shows us so much about both characters.

 And I think that’s a better way to approach it then trying to figure out if a character is redeemed yet: figuring out how they’ve progressed, how others respond to that progression and why.

 I hope that helps :)

Available on Wordpress.

Futurismo postale  Futurist Mail

Collezione Echaurren Salaris

Claudia Salaris

SilvanaEditoriale, Cinisello Balsamo 2019, 472 pagine, 900 illustrazioni,  Italiano, Inglese,  ISBN  9788836644797

euro 110,00

email if you want to buy [email protected]

Il terzo volume della collana sulla Collezione Echaurren Salaris, la più completa a livello mondiale sul futurismo, è dedicato alla comunicazione postale, così come la intesero i futuristi, che seppero sfruttare in modo nuovo e brillante questo antico mezzo di comunicazione. Di questa preziosa e ricca collezione sono qui pubblicati quasi 800 pezzi, fra cartoline d’artista, cartoline di propaganda, di satira o fotografiche e lettere con le loro buste, carte da lettera con intestazioni e pubblicità, francobolli ed erinnofili, che rendono questo libro uno strumento fondamentale per l’approfondimento del poliedrico mondo futurista. Nel perseguire il suo sogno ambizioso di una «ricostruzione futurista dell’universo», il movimento fondato da Filippo Tommaso Marinetti non si è limitato a utilizzare la rete delle poste per inviare in ogni parte del mondo libri, riviste, proclami e diffondere così a largo raggio le proprie idee, ma ha creato uno stile postale nuovo per concezione e confezione, fatto di sintesi, laconicità, simbologia convenzionale e abbreviativa.

12/09/20

orders to:     [email protected]

ordini a:        [email protected]

twitter:@fashionbooksmi

(deradicalization anon) I've already factored in short- and long-term trauma responses for both torturer and torturee, so I'm more interested in accounts of the process of deradicalization than the psychology. First-hand accounts about trauma symptoms/sources that draw from them are still welcome, though.

-

The honest response is ‘not enough data’.

 But it also depends on what you mean by ‘deradicalisation’. Because I’ve seen discussions that focus on it in the sense of encouraging people to leave extremist groups but I haven’t seen it in the sense of discouraging torture specifically.

 My impression is that most of the time it isn’t seen as a priority. Remember that while some torturers are part of terrorist organisations or guerilla groups most of the time we are talking about established, mainstream organisations.

 We’re talking about the state military, the police, jails, the local hospital, schools. The bastions of acceptable mainstream society.

 Basically the last place any concerted deradicalisation program will go.

 The types of people torturers are drawn from are not typically viewed as radicals by their society. Because people whose views are seen as radical are generally screened out of military and policing organisations and those are where the majority of torturers are operating.

 My personal view based on the interviews I’ve read is that torturers can come across as racist, misogynistic, homophobic and so forth. But they often aren’t expressing hate to a degree that would seem unusual in their culture, time period and society.

 I guess part of what I’m questioning here is whether there are actually any ‘radical’ views or practices at work in a typical torture scenario.

 My impression of modern global society is that rejection of violence is a radical position. Condoning it, excusing it and participating in it are not. In fact they seem to be (mostly) accepted parts of modern life.

 Which does not make it right. The fact that a proportion of people are willing to accept torture does not change the fact that it’s a brutal and pointless exercise.

 But it does make the idea of a concerted deradicalisation program of any kind less likely. It also means that a lot of the time these conversations… aren’t necessarily being approached in the way I think you’re imagining it.

 I think it is really likely that some torturers stop without being arrested. But we can’t examine that data set. Because without a trial and a conviction you can not easily ‘prove’ those people were torturers.

 And if they’ve already stopped they’re less likely to talk about what they’ve done in the past. Partly because it could be incriminating (I imagine the mental health problems torture causes are also a factor).

 All of this makes examining them in any meaningful way really really difficult.

 Circling back a little bit, I have talked before about torturers stopping because their mental health problems become severe enough that they’re sacked. I think it’s likely that a portion of them quit because of their mental health problems.

 There may also be a much smaller group of people who participate in torture for a short time then quit whatever position they had. I think it would be within the realm of possibility.

 But I’ve never read an interview like that so I can’t say what it would be like.

 Based on the handful of cases where torturers have quit/been sacked over mental health problems I don’t think there is necessarily a straight-forward deradicalisation process.

 It’s unclear how many torturers come to reject torture. We really just don’t know.

 I can tell you that it’s possible. I have read interviews where torturers have expressed regret (albeit limited and self-centred). I’ve also read interviews where torturers said they believe torture was wrong and they accomplished nothing.

 But the thing is… some of them say they believed that while they were torturing people and it didn’t stop them. Once again this is systematic abuse by government officials we’re talking about, that is a definition of torture; the environment is the major factor over everything else.

 None of this means that I think this is a bad story idea.

 Though I would strongly recommend that you don’t have this character get useful information from torture. Torturers aren’t equipped to ‘sift through the lies and garbage’. And torture fundamentally can’t ‘extract’ useful information. (Take a look at the links for more information.)

 Having said that I get the impression what you’re more focused on here is the idea that this torturer is learning to see the ‘enemy’ as human. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that idea.

 I think we should tell stories about people leaving these kinds of toxic environments and rejecting violence. Even if we’re not quite sure what the reality of that looks like.

 Stories are (or can be) about exploring human nature. I don’t see any harm in you exploring what you think this kind of character arc would look like. In ten years we might have more research. And it might say you were wrong, it might say you were right. But you were working with what you could access at the time.

 The most recent major piece of research I’m aware of on torturers is this book by Sironi. It’s in French. No there isn’t a translation. (I’m working on getting a translation for myself but legally speaking I would not be able to share it.)

 Before that… you basically have to go back to Fanon’s examination of two torturers in 1965 The Wretched of the Earth.

 As always Rejali is a useful source. But torturers aren’t his sole focus.

 There are interviews, like this one, with torturers. But it can be hard to draw conclusions from these. Partly because they’re just talking to one person so they may not be typical. Partly because the interviewers are often going into the situation with a lot of assumptions that colour the piece.

 I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a more definite answer.

Available on Wordpress.

If the character is a ‘psychopath’ loner with a strong interest in torture devices then realistically they are very very unlikely to be in a position where (legally speaking) they can torture.

 I’m not saying there are no abusive individuals who fit this description. But I feel like the legal definition of torture is important here because what you’re describing does not sound like a torturer.

 For something to be torture, legally speaking, it must be:

Painful

Done by a government employee acting as part of their job (some countries also include international organised crime groups or armed groups controlling territory)

Have one of the following motives:

Punishing the victim or someone else

Terrorising the victim or someone else

Forcing a confession

Attempting to obtain information

 So no, legally speaking torture can never be ‘just for the sake of it’. If it doesn’t have one of the above motives then it does not meet the definition.

 The kind of person you are describing is the kind of person that government organisations even in regimes that openly torture actively screen out. They see these people as impossible to control and a liability.

 The evidence we have strongly suggests that torturers are normal, healthy individuals before they start torturing. It is likely that their mental health problems are a result of torture rather then the other way round.

 I also think it’s incredibly unlikely that a character who has an interest in torture devices would actually have a good working knowledge about what torture does to the body.

 Yes I realise that I am saying that as someone who clearly has at least a passing interest in torture devices and knows what different tortures do to the body.

 Here’s why I think it’s unlikely: the books that talk about historical torture and torture devices are uniformly written by people who have zero knowledge of medicine, psychology, and neurology. They often seem to have no grasp of statistics or the scientific method either.

 I say this with some confidence because I have slogged through a lot of them. And while they seemed like convincing sources when I was 13 they now make me grit my teeth and despair of the state of science education globally.

 These books are useful for collating historical sources and describing what different cultures did at different times. They are good sources of historical witness statements. They’re good for getting an idea of common vs uncommon torture practices and how practices changed with time.

 Scott, bless him, can give you a decent account of what breaking on the wheel looked like. But I would not trust him to give a decent assessment of the ultimate cause of death any more then I’d trust him to perform heart surgery.

 The people who write about the history of torture do not tend to read about the psychology, neuroscience or medicine relevant to the subject.

 And this feeds into the prevalence of torture apologia. There is a massive lack of cross-disciplinary communication which hampers our ability to tackle apologia in a concerted way.

 Unless your character is also interested in medicine and policing and psychology specific to trauma they are extremely unlikely to know anything near the full range of effects.

 I get survivors who have access to expert help telling me they hadn’t realised some of the things they experienced were symptoms. And I have yet to meet or read a single historian who knew that beatings cause kidney failure.

 It is not natural or normal for a character who is primarily interested in doing these things to know how they work.

 This is not information you find by looking for how torture was performed. It’s not even information you find by looking for how survivors heal.

 It’s information you wrench out in a hundred pieces over years of reading history, psychology, survivor accounts, medicine, scientific journals and the work of people actively trying to stop torture.

 In other words; not the sort of thing a ‘lone wolf’ terrorist type character would think to look for or find.

 If I’ve made it look as though coming by this knowledge is easy let me disabuse you of that notion. I can do this because I have spent decades building up this knowledge and because I read very widely. Much of my knowledge has not come directly from my obsession with torture but from reading widely enough to apply ideas from different disciplines to the topic.

 Frankly I don’t think anyone looking up torture devices would find any accurate information about torture at all.

 I also think that trying to give a character like this so much unusual knowledge is suggesting that torturers (or in this case abusers) are smarter, more ‘competent’ and controlled then they actually are.

 People like this do not know the effects of what they’re doing. Half the time they don’t even know the basics beyond ‘this hurts my victim’ and ‘if I do it too long they’ll die’.

 They often carry on to the point that disabling injury or death is likely.

 This sort of character really misrepresents torturers by propping up the idea that they’re somehow specialists. It is buying in to and backing up the puffed up machismo torturers spout.

 This isn’t close to a realistic torturer.

 The research we have on torturers is currently lacking but if you want to engage with the subject here are some typical traits:

Development of common psychological symptoms as the character tortures others

Loss of prior skills

Strong connection to a group of torturers who become the character’s entire social circle

Unhealthy competitiveness which turns abuse into a competition

‘Hyper-masculinity’ which equates worth and manhood with violence (not necessarily a feature prior to becoming a torturer but appears constant in torturer-sub-groups across countries and cultures)

Reduced ability to relate to others, lack of insight into their crimes

Often a delusion that torture is effective, even when confronted with constant evidence that it is not

Constant, justifiable, fear that other torturers will turn on them

Arrogant delusions about their own worth and value

Mood swings

Self centred

 These people do not look like intelligent lone wolf ‘psychopaths’. They look like anti-social, asshole trauma survivors with awful political opinions.

 If you want to write a serial killer-type character there is not necessarily anything wrong with that.

 But there are big differences in the way these people operate and the scale of violence to which they are exposed.

 One of the torturers Sironi interviewed during her work was involved in the torture and murder of an estimated 13,000 people over a period of about two years. Those are not unusual figures.

 Is that really what you’re trying to write? Because if it isn’t then you haven’t grasped the magnitude of what you suggest when you use the word ‘torture’.

 If you want to write a torturer who isn’t typical there is not necessarily anything wrong with that.

 But if you’re doing that you can not assume your audience knows what is actually typical, and the ways you choose to depart from reality are not necessarily neutral. Think about what the unusual elements you include imply.

 And if any part of that implication is the idea that this particular torturer-character is somehow ‘better’, ‘smarter’ or ‘more capable’ then understand that you are supporting the kind of delusions of grandeur that real torturers use to justify their crimes.

Availableon Wordpress.

There isn’t enough research for me to give you a definitive answer here. If there are tell-tale signs then- the little bit of research we have so far hasn’t clearly identified them.

 I can’t say that there aren’t any tell-tale signs. The truth is we don’t know enough. We don’t know enough about who is vulnerable to ‘recruitment’, what the long term effects look like or long term rehabilitation.

 I can talk about what we know about the general mind set, justifications torturers use and the effects torture has on them. I think that would help your story.

 But in my opinion- I don’t think you can tell based on a person’s actions. Unless the action in question is literally witnessing them torturing someone.

 In these sorts of environments- your character would find a lot of people who voice support for torture, or apathy over whether or not it occurs. That does not necessarily mean the apologist has or will torture someone.

 The mental health problems torturers are vulnerable to occur naturally in the population for a wide number of reasons. And in groups like soldiers and police officers they could well be symptoms of other kinds of trauma.

 There are records of some torturers abusing their families. But it’s unclear how often this happens and plenty of abusers are not torturers.

 Personally- I am very dubious about the idea of someone looking at a person’s behaviour and assuming they can ‘tell’ their crimes as a result. I’m not dubious about it as a fictional idea, story wise it does have a lot of potential.

 I’m dubious about showing it as successful because- that sort of thinking is tangentially tied to torture in real life. This assumption of guilt is used to justify torture in real life. Especially when the victim is an ethnic minority or mentally ill.

 Let’s start with the simpler stuff: the long term symptoms torturers have are broadly the same as the ones survivors have.

 My impression is that torturers typically have less severe symptoms then survivors but this is not always the case. I usually recommend that writers pick a smaller range of symptoms for torturers then survivors (I think I usually say 1-3, but I do vary that if there are other traumatising factors in the story). As with any other kind of trauma symptom it’s impossible to predict which individual will develop which symptoms, so I recommend picking symptoms you feel fit the character and story best.

 Which brings us to the thornier issue of how torturers justify and relate to their crimes.

 Please remember that I’m not a mental health professional. I will try to make it clear when I am giving my opinion or the impressions I get from reading interviews verses assessments professionals have made.

 I don’t really see any marked difference in the arguments torturers make compared to torture apologists generally. If anything my impression is that torturers make less sophisticated versions of the same basic arguments.

 Torturers generally claim that torture ‘works’, either as a deterrent or as a way for obtaining accurate information. This is demonstrably false.

 I am honestly not sure whether most torturers believe it. My impression, based on the interview transcripts I’ve read, is that a lot of torturers are dense and somewhat self-deluded. I think it’s possible that some of them do genuinely believe it, despite their own experience.

 Torturers will often try to argue that they ‘had’ to commit their crimes and that it was ultimately in service of a greater good. The ‘logic’ is that if torture works the way they think it does (which it does not) then they ‘preventing’, terrorism, rebellion, animal poaching etc, and this justifies the harm they cause.

 This is more or less exactly the same argument that torture apologists often fall back on. The rhetoric that the ends justify the means- even if the means can not possibly lead to the end they’re arguing for.

 Another apologist argument that torturers commonly use is the idea that their victims deserved it.

 They emphasise that their victims were criminals, terrorists, homeless, ‘dangerous’ minorities, queer people- or any group that is pushed to the margins of society. They try to reframe their abuse as a heroic act and to reframe any arguments objecting to it as in support of crime, terrorism etc.

 Sironi, a professional who spent much of her career treating torturers, has said that they seem to have a lot of difficulty accepting the magnitude of what they’ve done. They downplay the harm they caused victims and underestimate the damage they did.

 It’s- difficult to describe what this looks like though because they do generally recognise that they’ve caused a lot of harm. I suppose the best way to describe it is a sort of self-pitying focus: torturers are much more likely to emphasise the problems torture has caused them then they are to show genuine sympathy for their victims. The impression I get from interviews is that they know they’ve caused harm but don’t really want to think about it too much.

 Perhaps the scale of it is overwhelming.

 To my knowledge there hasn’t been an indepth study examining things like socio-economic background in torturers.

 Anecdotally they are usually men, but this may be because discrimination against women makes it harder for them to join the organisations torturers are in. If there are less women in the military and police then for purely statistical reasons more torturers in those groups would be men.

 Rejali’s assessment was that they are often seen as loyal to the state/government they serve. Again this may be more to do with recruitment then anything else.

 As for their general mindset-

 My own impression is that they don’t re-adjust to society well.

 This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re violent. In fact I haven’t seen anything to say conclusively that they remain violent or aggressive after leaving the organisation they tortured for.

 But they struggle to come to terms with their mental health problems. They often seem to resist attempts to treat or address them.

 They struggle to keep down normal jobs. They struggle to access educational opportunities. They struggle to keep up relationships with their previous friends and family, they often don’t seem to develop new relationships at all.

 They’re profoundly isolated individuals. They’re generally quite seriously ill and they’re usually almost completely unsupported.

 The organisations that they tortured for- tend to get rid of them. Either when they reach the point of collapse due to mental health problems or when they decide torturers are a liability. The second option often seems to mean they’re killed.

 Here’s the thing though: from the outside without further evidence all of this can look very much like a trauma survivor.

 A trauma survivor who is also an apologist asshole, but a trauma survivor nonetheless.

 If you want your character to be right in their assessment then I’d suggest combining all of these with observation and survivor accounts. If other survivors have consistently pointed out a particular individual or group then it’s more likely they’ll be torturers. An individual who spends a lot of time at work with, or was trained by, a known torturer is more likely to be a torturer themselves.

 But this is definitely not fool proof.

 If you want your character to be wrong then keep in mind all the people that could fit the above description without necessarily being guilty of much besides- being wrong, possibly ill and a bit of a bastard.

 You might find the appendices to The Wretched of The Earth helpful. Particularly the notes on the two (very different) torturers and the torturer’s daughter.

 I hope this helps. :)

Availableon Wordpress.

Anni Venti in Italia

L’età dell’incertezza

a cura di Gianni Franzone e Matteo Fochessati

Sagep Editori, Genova 2019, 208 pagine, ISBN  978-88-6373-665-6

euro 30,00

email if you want to buy [email protected]

Catalogo della mostra di Palazzo Ducale di Genova 5 ottobre 2019 - 1 marzo 2020

In mostra tra le altre opere di Carlo Carrà, Felice Casorati, Galileo Chini, Giorgio de Chirico, Fortunato Depero, Achille Funi, Virgilio Guidi, Alberto Martini, Arturo Martini, Fausto Pirandello, Enrico Prampolini, Alberto Savinio, Scipione, Gino Severini, Mario Sironi, Adolfo Wildt.

Anni venti in Italia. L’età dell’incertezza propone un’indagine mirata sulla complessità storico, politica, sociale e culturale del decennio e sull’impatto che i suoi precipui caratteri esercitarono sulle ricerche estetiche del tempo, in particolare sulla produzione pittorica e plastica. A tale variegato panorama storico e sociale corrispose infatti nel campo delle arti figurative un’ampia molteplicità di declinazioni linguistiche, che rappresentarono il termometro di un’epoca convulsa. Nonostante la storiografia abbia sovente messo in rilievo il carattere ruggente degli anni venti, questi si presentano come un’epoca caratterizzata da una generale sensazione di inquietudine che, in campo artistico, trovò dunque riscontro in una vasta gamma di enigmatiche rappresentazioni di attesa, alimentando pure l’esplorazione di universi spirituali, irrazionali e onirici, l’evasione verso dimensioni edonistiche e l’aspirazione a un ritorno al passato, condensata nella celebre definizione di “ritorno all’ordine”.

21/01/20

orders to:     [email protected]

ordini a:        [email protected]

twitter:@fashionbooksmi

The book is How Do You Make a Torturer by F Sironi. It’s going to be published by La Decouverte and I really hope it will have an English translation because otherwise I may be spending a long long time with google translate again.

It may not be widely released and the best bet is probably to look up the publisher.

You can also find an interview the New Scientist had with the author in their July 15th issue this year. :)

Edit: While trying to find the release date I stumbled upon this talk Sironi gave on youtube. I can’t currently listen to it because my laptop is a crumbling wreck with no sound system. But I can confirm visually that that is the author, she’s been interviewing torturers for years and readers might well find her talk interesting:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If2_p5sDjOA