Dr Stephen Burwood S.A.Burwood@hull.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Turned into body by the other
Burwood, Stephen
Authors
Contributors
Dr Stella Gonzalez-Arnal S.Gonzalez-Arnal@hull.ac.uk
Editor
Gill Jagger
Editor
Kathleen Lennon
Editor
Abstract
Jean Améry’s autobiographical account of torture at the hands of the Gestapo provides the most striking, if also the most harrowing, example of how the body resurfaces in conscious awareness due to pain and how such experiences often reveal an ambiguity in one’s embodied identity. Améry was an Austrian-born Jew who spent the early years of the Second World War working for the Belgian Resistance. After his arrest in July 1943 he was taken to the Fort Breendonk ‘reception camp’ and tortured before being shipped to a series of concentration camps, including Auschwitz.1 The Gestapo shackled his hands behind his back and then raised him by a chain until he was suspended by his hands a metre above the floor. Améry describes in detail his desperate but ultimately futile attempt to prevent the inevitable: the shattering dislocation of his arms from his shoulder joints. His arms were torn from behind and were twisted back over his head. As he remarks dryly, ‘Torture, from Latin torquere, to twist’ (ibid.: 32). As if this were not enough, during all of this the Gestapo officer present horsewhipped him with incredible brutality.
Citation
Burwood, S. (2012). Turned into body by the other. In S. Gonzalez-Arnal, G. Jagger, & K. Lennon (Eds.), Embodied selves (119-138). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283696_8
Publication Date | Jan 1, 2012 |
---|---|
Deposit Date | Dec 19, 2014 |
Journal | Embodied selves |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Peer Reviewed | Not Peer Reviewed |
Pages | 119-138 |
Book Title | Embodied selves |
Chapter Number | 7 |
ISBN | 9780230299740 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283696_8 |
Keywords | REF 2014 submission |
Public URL | https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/370764 |
Contract Date | Dec 19, 2014 |
You might also like
Are chimeras ‘natural’? Disgust, ethics and ‘nature’
(2015)
Book Chapter
‘Justicia Epistemologica: Escuchando al Sur’
(2014)
Book Chapter
Downloadable Citations
About Repository@Hull
Administrator e-mail: repository@hull.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search