The Wound and the Witness

Explores the rhetorical functions of torture and the witnessing of torture in both classical texts and contemporary contexts. The Wound and the Witness offers a historically grounded approach to an urgent contemporary problem: the persistence of torture in Western culture. Drawing upon ancient Greek and Roman texts, as well as contemporary media events, Jennifer R. Ballengee explores the spectacle of torture as a persuasive device. She suggests that both torture and the witnessing of torture are