Emile Durkheim and the Torture at Guantanamo

       One theme of this blog is that Sociology often forgets the wisdom its founders. In this case Emile Durkheim published an essay in 1898 that ought to be read by anyone considering the prisoner practices of the Bush Administration.

    Durkheim’s essay –“Individualism and the Intellectuals”- spoke to one of France’s greatest political controversies, the incarceration and cruel, inhuman and torturous treatment of Albert Dreyfus. By the time Durkheim published his essay, Dreyfus’ innocence was obvious; but, even more outrageous was his everyday life on Devil’s Island, a nineteenth century version of Guantanamo. Prisoners often died from the hellish heat; since it slowed their metabolism, digestion proved to be a problem for even the strongest specimens. Dreyfus, however, received special treatment. He lived in a hut, five feet by ten feet.  Two high walls prevented any view of the Caribbean and, at night, guards locked him down using a double metal buckle. In the middle of nowhere, Dreyfus was forced to put both ankles through the buckles, a guard then placed an iron bar through the foot of the bed and, as the buckles snapped shut, Dreyfus tried to maintain his sanity.

     Durkheim’s essay always keeps Dreyfus in the background. Up front is a “religion of humanity” that seeks to provide moral glue for everyone on earth. That’s a tall order but in a period characterized by anomie (normlessness) Durkheim saw the desperate need for a morality that allowed people to transcend the barriers normally erected by, for example, language, nation, culture, religion, ethnicity or social class.

     Durkheim called his moral code “individualism”; and he stressed that it had nothing to do with egoism, selfishness or, in today’s parlance, a need for my own space. “Individualism is the glorification not of the self but of the individual in general. It springs not from egoism but from sympathy for all that is human, a broader pity for all sufferings, for all human miseries, a more ardent need to combat them and mitigate them, a greater thirst for justice.” Champion individualism and you would create a new and lasting “communion of spirits”, rooted in the belief that “each individual consciousness contains something divine and thus finds itself marked with a character that renders it sacred and inviolable to others.”

    Strip away the religious language and you are left with what we today call human rights. Among others, Durkheim led the way to the Geneva Conventions by thirsting after justice and by stressing that individualism came with freedoms and responsibilities. The first freedom was “freedom of thought” and the first responsibility was to use reason to question the competence of those in authority. Fail to challenge authority and you committed “moral suicide”, an offense that was both unthinkable and unforgivable.

      Following Durkheim, we need to challenge the painful reasoning of the Bush Administration. The President and his advisors argue that torture exists only when the pain produced by interrogation leads to “organ failure, death, or the permanent impairment of a bodily function.”   Burn and scar a person with lit cigarettes. Use (as in one of the renditions to Morocco) a razor to slash the chest and penis. Simulate downing by the use of water boarding. None of this is torture, with the result that the President tortures both people and the English language. As the Cambridge University Dictionary defines it, torture “is the act of causing great physical or mental pain in order to persuade someone to do something or to give information”.

       Using this definition, the President is a Grand Inquisitor, a man who presides over torture chambers that, thanks to the rendition program, extend from one end of the earth to the other.

           The White House legal memos also note that, if torture is forbidden, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is permissible. In Guantanamo they use “a padded cell on wheels” that is reminiscent of Dreyfus treatment on Devil’s Island. The wheels allow the prisoner to be easily transported; meanwhile, the chair has straps for the arms and legs, and, specially designed for the Caribbean, two additional straps for the head and the chest. It reminds some people of the electric chair, except that in this hot seat the prisoner never dies. He simply sits there, in a vicious vise, for as long as his interrogators deem appropriate.

     Attorney General Alberto Gonzales provided the ultimate “legal” justification for Guantanamo. He defined the prisoners as “illegal enemy combatants”. Since Afghanistan was a failed state and the members of Al Qaeda a terrorist group, the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The prisoners were human beings without human rights.

      In response Durkheim’s essay emphatically asserts that the ideal of Individualism applies to all human beings. There are no exceptions to the rule because, when it comes to human rights, even the worst terrorist is marked with a character that is both sacred and inviolable. Forget that moral injunction and you destroy the communion of spirits that, as in the Geneva Conventions, provides a universal standard for what is civilized - and for what is contemptible.

       The final irony of this sordid story comes from Clive Stafford Smith’s, Eight Clock Ferry to the Windward Side. As of 2007, the Pentagon admitted that, like Albert Dreyfus, “well over half” of the original Guantanamo prisoners were innocent. Many of the “worst of the worst” were arrested outside of Afghanistan, as a result of bribes paid by U.S. officials. For $5000 anyone turned in anyone, as the President claimed a victory in the war on terror.

       Here Durkheim again has the last word: “It would therefore seem impossible that these dilettantes’ games could long succeed in holding back the masses if we know how to act. But also, what a humiliation it would be if reason, dealing with so weak an opponent, should end by being worsted, even if only for a time.”