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Sherene Razack
Sherene Razack is Professor, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her research and teaching interests lie in the area of race and gender issues in the law.
Abstract
"‘A Culturally Different Enemy and Other Everyday Expressions
of White Supremacy: Reflections on Torture."
Its now four years since the Abu Ghraib pictures hit the airwaves
and discussions of torture are still everywhere. In this presentation
I explore how many contemporary discussions of torture that
take place as critique rely upon, even as they install,
the idea that the enemy is culturally different from us. Academic
panels, for instance, now good naturedly discussed
the need for new methods of interrogation now that we are dealing
with a culturally different enemy. Examining Errol Morris’s
documentary ‘Standard Operating Procedure’ and the book
on which it is based authored by Philip Gourevtich and Errol
Morris, I trace the work done by the idea that Arab/Muslim
means a different kind of human. Ordinary people who torture
are produced as people whose actions are justifiable, given
the extreme conditions of the encounter between Arabs/Muslims
and the First World. I suggest that we are being schooled to
get through torture, as the soldiers at Abu Ghraib are
shown to be doing in Morris’s film, by appealing to the idea
that culturally different humans can only be kept in line through
violence.
This topic will be presented on Friday, April 17th at 10:15 a.m. as part of the Panel I discussion "Race, Otherness and the Body."
Select Publications
"Casting Out: Race and the Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics," University of Toronto Press, 2007.
"Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism," University of Toronto Press, 2004.
"Editor, Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society," Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002.
"Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms," University of Toronto Press, 1998 (1999, 2001, 2006).
"Canadian Feminism and the Law: The Women's Legal Education and Action Fund and the Pursuit of Equality," Toronto: Second Story Press, 1991.
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