The Meaning of Torture* Paul D. Kenny Yale University Despite being the subject of much recent scholarly work, torture remains an ambiguous concept. As recent legal arguments have made clear, such vagueness has important and immediate political consequences. This article makes a number of contributions towards resolving this ambiguity. First, it argues that the distinction between physical and psychological abuse is unwarranted. Second, it puts forward a logical basis for the distinction between torture and legally permissible punishments like incarceration. Third, it distinguishes between torture and related concepts like cruelty or sadism by stressing the instrumentality of torture. Ultimately, torture is defined as the systematic and deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person over whom the actor has physical control, in order to induce a behavioral response from that person. Polity advance online publication, 21 December 2009; doi:10.1057/pol.2009.21 Keywords pain; sadism; suffering; torture; violence Paul D. Kenny is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale University. The author can be reached by email at: paul.kenny@yale.edu. Torture is a human practice with a long if ignominious past. 1 Yet even after a spate of new research on the topic following the September 11th attacks and the subsequent controversy over U.S. treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, there is little agreement on what we actually mean by the term torture. For some, it is limited to the infliction of severe physical pain for *For helpful comments and suggestions, I thank Vittorio Bufacchi, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Lee Ann Fuji, Bryan Garsten, Matthew Kocher, James Vreeland, Elisabeth Wood, and three anonymous reviewers for Polity . I would also like to thank participants at the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence Workshop, Yale University, March 4, 2009, for an enlightening discussion. Any remaining errors and omissions are my own. 1. Malise Ruthven, Torture: The Grand Conspiracy (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978); Daniel Pratt Mannix, The History of Torture (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2003). On the institutionalization of torture inthe twentiethcentury, see Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror , 1st ed. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006); Michael Otterman, American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2007); Darius M. Rejali, Torture and Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). Polity . 2009 r 2009 Northeastern Political Science Association 0032-3497/09 www.palgrave-journals.com/polity/