The Importance of Naming Torture and Terrorism

Abstract Chapter 6 concludes this book by highlighting the importance of naming the forms of violence discussed in this book as torture and terrorism. Expanding the meaning of these terms, as I have done, is not simply a rhetorical move but reveals how widespread and engrained forms of violence inflicted by and through American institutions on people of color and other marginalized groups are relevantly like core cases of torture and terrorism. Naming these forms of violence as torture and terrorism foregrounds the suffering inflicted by these forms of violence and highlights the urgency of combating the political, social, and legal narratives that continue to enable the erasure and ongoing infliction of torture and terrorism on thousands of innocent people in America and abroad.