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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
other means
outer limits
john yoo
and the public
memorialization
of exception
david platzer is a second year Ph.d student in the Comparative Literature program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work primarily focuses on the intersections between legitimate ("high") and illegitimate ("low") culture and accordant role of communication technologies in the West African context.
He has secondary interests in global cinema, critical theory, and political philosophy.
Between 2001 and 2003, John Yoo, a first generation Korean émigré who previously and subsequently worked as a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General for then Attorney General John Ashcroft's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).1 In this capacity, Yoo was instrumental
in formulating, through a series of memos, the legal rationale or justification
for certain methods of "coercive interrogation" that many, including myself, would understand to constitute torture. In the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004, a number of these memos (specifically those written in 2002) became public through leaks, catapulting the "soft-spoken" Yoo, by then once again a professor at Boalt Hall, into the media and public eye as the so-called "architect of torture."2 For the past four years, the media attention on Yoo has hardly dissipated; his name has in many ways become a metonymic distillation of the debate over torture itself, with literally hundreds
of articles, books, and documentaries either addressing Yoo's role in particular or utilizing his voice through a choice, and often quite provocative quote (which Yoo, hardly the shy and retiring academic he sometimes fashions himself as, has been all too happy to furnish). This essay seeks to address two interconnected and indeed sometimes
intractable issues concerning the figure of John Yoo. First, how does the legal rationale
that Yoo helped engineer, and which he has profusely and liberally articulated
outer limits
john yoo
and the public
memorialization
of exception
david platzer is a second year Ph.d student in the Comparative Literature program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work primarily focuses on the intersections between legitimate ("high") and illegitimate ("low") culture and accordant role of communication technologies in the West African context.
He has secondary interests in global cinema, critical theory, and political philosophy.
Between 2001 and 2003, John Yoo, a first generation Korean émigré who previously and subsequently worked as a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General for then Attorney General John Ashcroft's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).1 In this capacity, Yoo was instrumental
in formulating, through a series of memos, the legal rationale or justification
for certain methods of "coercive interrogation" that many, including myself, would understand to constitute torture. In the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004, a number of these memos (specifically those written in 2002) became public through leaks, catapulting the "soft-spoken" Yoo, by then once again a professor at Boalt Hall, into the media and public eye as the so-called "architect of torture."2 For the past four years, the media attention on Yoo has hardly dissipated; his name has in many ways become a metonymic distillation of the debate over torture itself, with literally hundreds
of articles, books, and documentaries either addressing Yoo's role in particular or utilizing his voice through a choice, and often quite provocative quote (which Yoo, hardly the shy and retiring academic he sometimes fashions himself as, has been all too happy to furnish). This essay seeks to address two interconnected and indeed sometimes
intractable issues concerning the figure of John Yoo. First, how does the legal rationale
that Yoo helped engineer, and which he has profusely and liberally articulated
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posted 12/21/09 @ 8:31 PM EST
This article is amazing!
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