More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/when-democracies-torture.

Torture is prohibited under international law and is widely considered a human rights violation. But despite the fact that 157 countries ratified the UN Convention Against Torture, it is still practiced in many states to this day. Moreover, while we might associate torture with dictatorships, liberal democracies pioneered the modern techniques that leave no physical trace. So why do democracies torture? Can calling torture by other names, such as “enhanced interrogation,” really resolve the deep conflict between what we say and what we do? Or has the taboo against torture finally been broken? John and Ken enhance their interrogation of Darius Rejali from Reed College, author of "Torture and Democracy."

When Democracies Torture

“Breath and Precarity” addresses a confluence of black music and experimental poetics in the United States that arose during the post-World War II period, a confluence in which the salience and foregrounding of breath and breathing relate to precarious conditions on multiple, concurrent fronts. Ranging from Charles Olson to Eric Garner and Frantz Fanon, it touches on the work of such writers as Amiri Baraka, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, John Tchicai, Ben Webster, Sonny Rollins and Roscoe Mitchell. Mackey's lecture looks retrospectively at a line of poetic and musical thought and performance that was important to his formative years as a writer, referencing his own work and, in particular, outlining the backdrop to a recent poem in his “Mu” series, “The Overghost Ourkestra’s Next,” with a reading of which it concludes.

Nathaniel Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic, and editor. He is the author of several books of poetry, fiction, and criticism and has received numerous awards for his work, including the National Book Award in poetry, the Stephen Henderson Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and the 2015 Bollingen Prize for Poetry. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

Nathaniel Mackey: "Breath and Precarity”

Reed College Dean of Students Bruce Smith visits with Vice President of Admission and Financial Aid Milyon Trulove and Director of Communications Kevin Myers to welcome the Reed College Class of 2022.

Orientation: Welcome to Reed, Class of 2022!

Reed College, located in Portland, Oregon, was founded in 1908 as an independent, coeducational, nonsectarian college of the liberal arts and sciences. Committed to intellectual rigor and academic freedom, rejecting the establishment of intercollegiate sport and fraternal societies, and guided by an egalitarian spirit and meritocratic ideal, Reed has served for over a hundred years as a model of independent leadership in higher education.

Nathaniel Mackey: "Breath and Precarity”

Reed College

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