Absence and Uncertainty: A New Form of Terror – Runyao Fan

Absence and Uncertainty: A New Form of Terror

RUNYAO FAN

During the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, an unknown man was pictured confronting a column of tanks moving down an avenue. The image is widely considered a symbol of resistance against the state’s overwhelming power. But in reality, the man was pulled aside by two unidentified men after the confrontation and disappeared. Rumor has it that he was arrested by the police; his exact fate remains a mystery. In October 2018, Saudi Arabian journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi went missing after entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. Only with global attention and pressure were investigations carried out, concluding that Khashoggi was ordered to be killed. Still, many details of Khashoggi’s final moments remain obscure. Instead of publicly punishing these enemies of the state, the authorities chose to keep the assassins’ fate a secret. This demonstrates the contemporary relevance of Foucault’s argument in Discipline and Punish that “torture as a public spectacle” (7) has disappeared. While Foucault’s main argument is that an element of torture in the contemporary penal system targets the mind instead of the body (11), I wish to go beyond it by arguing that the system’s subtlety and lack of public display create obscurity and secrecy, which work upon the people’s mind as powerfully as excessive display of cruelty. The power asymmetry is maintained by the inability to see, through which a new, arguably stronger form of terror (49) is established. In this essay, I will provide a close reading of Foucault’s portrayal of the public executions before the French Revolution as an “exercise of ‘terror’” (49), and how the element of public display has eventually been downplayed through reforms (7). Looking into the shift of the penal system as described by Foucault, I will illustrate how the features of the reformed system retain the element of terror through a different mechanism, one not supported by the excess of spectacle but the absence of it.

Foucault argues that public executions intentionally establish “terror” by making everyone see that the criminal’s body is fully subject to the sovereign’s will (49). According to him, public executions display “the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength” through “imbalance and excess” (49). Here, we see that two elements are essential to achieving the concept of terror: the offender’s body and the people’s eyes. The body serves as a concrete, physical medium to carry the abstract concept of asymmetric power relation. The ubiquitous force of the sovereign on all of its people manifests itself as actual forces that leave horrible marks on the offender’s body. Through this process, the sovereign materializes the oppression as a direct, relatable pain “before all eyes” (48), and effectively passes the sense of terror into “the hearts of men” (49).

After the detailed analysis of the penal system before the 19th century, Foucault describes how the penal system has been reformed, and how public spectacles designed to inflict physical pain have been replaced by subtle mechanisms that work on the mind (11). Punishment “leaves the domain of more or less everyday perception and enters that of abstract consciousness” (9). In the modern penal system, punishment has been taken away from the public attention. Sufferings are “deprived of their visual display” and punishment tends to “become the most hidden part of the penal process” (9). In Foucault’s argument, this shift corresponds to the changing role of the body, from the recipient of “unbearable sensations” to an instrument of “suspended rights” (11). From physical pain that hurts momentarily, torture has transformed into a psychological ordeal that could last for decades (11). While Foucault describes the disappearance of public torture as a phenomenon accompanying the body’s new function, I argue that the disappearance of public torture itself can be considered as a new form of “terror” (49). The two conditions of Foucault’s idea of terror, the manifestation of power and the communication of this manifestation to the people, can be achieved not only through public manipulation of the offender’s body, but also the lack of information on their suffering. To successfully establish terror, the unrestrained power of the sovereign must find a carrier, a tangible representation, which needs to be presented to the people.

Although the reformed penal system has relinquished its right to produce an insurmountable degree of pain on the offender’s body, the sovereign still has full control over the body, which “now serves as an instrument or intermediary” (11). Instead of tearing the body apart, the sovereign restricts its movement. The body’s complete obedience to this restriction serves as the new manifestation of the overwhelming power, and the general public is informed of it: “The publicity has shifted to the trial, and to the sentence” (9). What distinguishes the two systems is that in the old system, public execution serves as both the announcement and enforcement of the power, whereas the modern system announces the power through trial and sentencing, and the enforcement of it continues long after the public announcement and remains largely obscure. The distance the modern system has put between the justice and the punishment (10) and the segregation it entails produce an information blackout. Despite words and pictures that reach the public from the prison, the people have lost the ability to see for themselves, the most reliable way of cognition. While people in the past see with their own eyes the worst things that could be done to a criminal, they are now left to suspect and wonder. While the people used to be “the witnesses, the guarantors, of the punishment” (58), they are now denied of that role. The uncertainty allows the formulation of the worst speculation, and the powerlessness reinforces the dissymmetry between the sovereign and the people. Spectacle has a limit, while imagination is boundless. Excess leaves impressions, while absence catalyzes fear. Instead of setting up the stage and offering a cruel show, the sovereign may now leave the work to people’s mind, where a thousand shows, one crueler than the other, maintain the idea of terror through the power of absence.

The absence of display coincides with the concept of the Panopticon. A design for prisons, the Panopticon has a watchtower which allows guards to watch all the cells without being seen by prisoners. Though it is impossible for a guard to watch over all prisoners all the time, prisoners behave themselves because of the perpetual possibility of being seen. As the fear of being watched is not derived from the sight of guards but the possibility of their presence, the Panopticon works even if there is no guard in the central tower. Similarly, when the ability to see is deprived of the people, the terror

of punishment comes from the range of possibilities instead of the actual penalty. What happened to the man confronting tanks in 1989? Perhaps he was executed, or perhaps the government did not do anything to him. Regardless, terror is maintained for as long as his fate remains unknown. With uncertainty, ideas of terror and total surveillance work better on people’s minds. The absence of public display not only preserves terror, but also allows it to reach deeper into our fear.

WORKS CITED

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan

Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1995.