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Other Means Outer Limits: John Yoo and the Public Memorialization of Exception
David Platzer
Issue date: 12/1/08 Section: Fall 2008
1 Yoo, John. The Powers of War and Peace, 2005, p.viii
2 Scott Horton "Deconstructing John Yoo" January 23, 2008 http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002226, as accessed on June 2, 2008.
through the abovementioned amplified trade publications, countless public interviews, newspaper editorials, and so on, fit within larger public debates over the usage and/or justification of torture by United States military and CIA interrogators? Secondly,
though not separately, I seek to interrogate how Yoo, as he has been represented and positioned in the media spectacle surrounding torture, reflects and reveals certain
cardinal features of the shifting function and constitution of the post 9/11 "public intellectual."1 To recapitulatethe object of my inquiry succinctly, how, I ask in this essay,
in his dual capacities as both public intellectual/ academic and former Department of Justice operative does John Yoo function within the maelstrom of the public/media debate over torture?
Before addressing Yoo on the level of media spectacle and popular discourse/public opinion, it is necessary to first articulate and lay out a working version of Yoo's main argument(s). To his credit, Yoo has remained remarkably consistent in his reasoning
and logic from platform to platform; whatever else we may wind up saying about him, and though his rhetoric shifts in register from, say, an OLC memo to a pithy and provocative public outburst, his basic arguments have remained steady and coherent (if not exactly or precisely static).2 In summarizing his argument andherein, I am drawing primarily on his 2006 mass market publication War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror, in which he himself exposits, in rather broad strokes, the logic and reasoning behind his (slightly) qualified justification/advocation of "coercive interrogation" and how this relates to his more general understanding of wartime executive power, along with the accordant distribution of decisive agency (decision
2 Scott Horton "Deconstructing John Yoo" January 23, 2008 http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002226, as accessed on June 2, 2008.
through the abovementioned amplified trade publications, countless public interviews, newspaper editorials, and so on, fit within larger public debates over the usage and/or justification of torture by United States military and CIA interrogators? Secondly,
though not separately, I seek to interrogate how Yoo, as he has been represented and positioned in the media spectacle surrounding torture, reflects and reveals certain
cardinal features of the shifting function and constitution of the post 9/11 "public intellectual."1 To recapitulatethe object of my inquiry succinctly, how, I ask in this essay,
in his dual capacities as both public intellectual/ academic and former Department of Justice operative does John Yoo function within the maelstrom of the public/media debate over torture?
Before addressing Yoo on the level of media spectacle and popular discourse/public opinion, it is necessary to first articulate and lay out a working version of Yoo's main argument(s). To his credit, Yoo has remained remarkably consistent in his reasoning
and logic from platform to platform; whatever else we may wind up saying about him, and though his rhetoric shifts in register from, say, an OLC memo to a pithy and provocative public outburst, his basic arguments have remained steady and coherent (if not exactly or precisely static).2 In summarizing his argument andherein, I am drawing primarily on his 2006 mass market publication War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror, in which he himself exposits, in rather broad strokes, the logic and reasoning behind his (slightly) qualified justification/advocation of "coercive interrogation" and how this relates to his more general understanding of wartime executive power, along with the accordant distribution of decisive agency (decision
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posted 12/21/09 @ 8:31 PM EST
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