The aim of torture
The South African writer J.M. Coetzee has pinpointed the typical aim of torture:
In the torture room, unlimited force is exerted upon the physical being of an individual in a twilight of legal illegality, with the purpose, if not of destroying him, then at least of destroying the kernel of resistance within him.
It is a contest of wills conducted through the victim’s body, with the victim in a position of utter physical helplessness. It is where, as Coetzee put it, “one human being is free to exercise his imagination to the limits in the performance of vileness upon the body of another”. Sometimes this is to extract information, sometimes simply to punish the victim for his or her
