Instruments of Violence: Pain and Value in Guantanamo Bay

This thesis examines the methods and meanings of violence within the detention center in Guantánamo Bay. I propose that the violence perpetrated by U.S. agents against detainees is guided by an ethical rationality rooted in liberal definitions of freedom as well as peculiarly neoliberal commensurability between certain modes of pain and the purported `value' of intelligence. Through an exploration of government reports as well as journalistic accounts of the detention center, I articulate this rationality by describing the way intelligence is produced and commodified in Guantanamo, reviewing the ethical structure of interrogation conducted by U.S. agents and by investigating the ethical subject-hood of detainees