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The Truth Machines : Policing, Violence, and Scientific Interrogations in India Jinee Lokaneeta.

By: Series: Law, meaning, and violencePublisher: Hyderabad Orient BlackSwan [2020]Description: pages cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780472074396
  • 9780472054398
  • 9789390122028
Subject(s): Additional physical formats: Online version:: The truth machinesDDC classification:
  • 363.2540954 LOK  23
LOC classification:
  • HV8247 .L65 2020
Contents:
Content : Chapter 1. Introduction ; Chapter 2. Police as a Site of State Power: Custody Practices and Policing Logics Chapter 3. Transnational Borrowings, Scientific Contestations, and Cultural Productions ; Chapter 4. The State Forensic Architecture: Forensic Psychologists and the Art of Scientific Interrogations Chapter 5. Courts and Legal Discourses: The (Flawed) Art of Government ; Chapter 6. Scaffold of the Rule of Law: Terror Suspects and the Experience of Violence ; Chapter 7. Conclusion ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index
Summary: "Using case studies and the results of extensive fieldwork, this book considers the nature of state power and legal violence in liberal democracies by focusing on the interaction between law, science, and policing in India. The postcolonial Indian police have often been accused of using torture in both routine and exceptional criminal cases, but they, and forensic psychologists, have claimed that lie detectors, brain scans, and narcoanalysis (the use of "truth serum," Sodium Pentothal) represent a paradigm shift away from physical torture; most state high courts in India have upheld this rationale. The Truth Machines examines the emergence and use of these three scientific techniques to analyze two primary themes. First, the book questions whether existing theoretical frameworks for understanding state power and legal violence are adequate to explain constant innovations of the state. Second, it explores the workings of law, science, and policing in the everyday context to generate a theory of state power and legal violence, challenging the monolithic frameworks about this relationship, based on a study of both state and non-state actors. Jinee Lokaneeta argues that the attempt to replace physical torture with truth machines in India fails because it relies on a confessional paradigm that is contiguous with torture. Her work also provides insights into a police institution that is founded and refounded in its everyday interactions between state and non-state actors. Theorizing a concept of Contingent State, this book demonstrates the disaggregated, and decentered nature of state power and legal violence, creating possible sites of critique and intervention"-- Provided by publisher.
List(s) this item appears in: RAMESH JUL 2020 | NAAC 2020-21
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Item type Current library Shelving location Call number Status Date due Barcode
BOOKs BOOKs National Law School General Stacks 363.2540954 LOK (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 38179

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Content :
Chapter 1. Introduction ; Chapter 2. Police as a Site of State Power: Custody Practices and Policing Logics
Chapter 3. Transnational Borrowings, Scientific Contestations, and Cultural Productions ;
Chapter 4. The State Forensic Architecture: Forensic Psychologists and the Art of Scientific Interrogations
Chapter 5. Courts and Legal Discourses: The (Flawed) Art of Government ; Chapter 6. Scaffold of the Rule of Law: Terror Suspects and the Experience of Violence ; Chapter 7. Conclusion ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index

"Using case studies and the results of extensive fieldwork, this book considers the nature of state power and legal violence in liberal democracies by focusing on the interaction between law, science, and policing in India. The postcolonial Indian police have often been accused of using torture in both routine and exceptional criminal cases, but they, and forensic psychologists, have claimed that lie detectors, brain scans, and narcoanalysis (the use of "truth serum," Sodium Pentothal) represent a paradigm shift away from physical torture; most state high courts in India have upheld this rationale. The Truth Machines examines the emergence and use of these three scientific techniques to analyze two primary themes. First, the book questions whether existing theoretical frameworks for understanding state power and legal violence are adequate to explain constant innovations of the state. Second, it explores the workings of law, science, and policing in the everyday context to generate a theory of state power and legal violence, challenging the monolithic frameworks about this relationship, based on a study of both state and non-state actors. Jinee Lokaneeta argues that the attempt to replace physical torture with truth machines in India fails because it relies on a confessional paradigm that is contiguous with torture. Her work also provides insights into a police institution that is founded and refounded in its everyday interactions between state and non-state actors. Theorizing a concept of Contingent State, this book demonstrates the disaggregated, and decentered nature of state power and legal violence, creating possible sites of critique and intervention"-- Provided by publisher.

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