The Hammer of Justice

Although J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians specifies neither the place nor the time of its action, there is one scene that seems to take us make to the pre-modern era. It is a scene that portrays the shocking and brutal torture of twelve barbarian prisoners as a public spectacle.   In the scene, the prisoners are naked and sewn together with wire through their cheeks and hands to keep them from scattering: “Their thoughts wholly concentrated on moving smoothly with the cord, not giving the wire a chance to tear their flesh.” The imagery in this scene conveys that the prisoners are no longer functioning autonomously, but are being controlled by their fear. The prisoners are led through the town by Colonel Joll and the soldiers under his command. The military nature of the parade and the public spectacle it leads to demonstrate what Michel Foucault calls “the justice of the king” or an “armed justice” in Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. The parade of prisoners and the spectacle of torture are both militaristic and full of pomp.  They become exhibitions that confirm the power of the Empire, which rules its citizens not by justice, but by fear of its considerable and arbitrary force.

Foucault suggests that being an enemy of the Empire is enough to warrant torture because an enemy is automatically a criminal and, therefore, subject to punishment. Hence, this most disturbing scene in Coetzee’s novel conveys the association between enemy and criminal, as well as the punishment criminals must undergo to pay for the crime of being aboriginal. After the parade of prisoners, Colonel Joll writes on their backs the word “ENEMY.” He then commands the soldiers to beat the twelve until the writing disappears. After the initial flogging of the barbarians, the crowd pushes a girl into the arena and to her is given a rod of which she uses to strike a barbarian. After the girl exits there is overflow from the crowd that tries to get involved in the spectacle, but the soldiers are there to keep the crowd in check: “the soldiers reassert themselves, the crowd scrambles back, [and] the arena is reconstituted, though narrower than before.” The use of the word “narrow” is telling because it conveys the narrow line between being the Empire’s allies and the Empire’s enemies. Foucault explains that within the history of torture that “in calling on the crowd to manifest its power, the sovereign tolerate[s] for a moment acts of violence, which he accept[s] as a sign of allegiance, but which [is] strictly limited by the sovereign’s own privileges.” The spectacle continues when Colonel Joll displays the final instrument of torture—a hammer. It is the hammer that finally jars the Magistrate enough to protest that Colonel Joll “would not use the hammer on a beast, not on a beast!” The Magistrate’s appeal is significant because he does not appeal to justice but to humanity.

Foucault explains that torture is a form of punishment meant to control the body through fear. The punishment meant for the prisoners was fixed in a historic context that used torture as the hammer of justice. Yet, Foucault does not laud the entrance of the prison system as an unambiguous sign of human progress.  Rather than controlling its citizens through fear, he explains, we enter a stage in which the state seeks to control citizens’ bodies by controlling their minds, a program that is perhaps the more insidious because it operates outside of the public eye, deep within the impenetrable walls of the prison.

-- Dana Morency