ABSTRACTThis paper explores the theme of torture in the Colombian Truth Commission’s Final Report, focusing on its characterization of torture as a way of annulling a person’s identity. Drawing on Jean Améry’s approach, I argue that torture destroys the victim’s world and explore the further implications of this assertion. I begin by highlighting how the history of torture distorts legal and medical practices, masquerading as a quest for truth while exercising a farce of power, disintegrating the victim’s lived body. By delving into Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “flesh,” I also explain how torture erodes the carnal trust that connects us to the world and enables proper communication. Consequently, torture results in an utter negation of the self and the world. In conclusion, I suggest that torture as understood as the destitution of a person’s world, can serve as a paradigm for comprehending the experiences of violence faced by victims in Colombia.KEYWORDS: TorturefleshworldAméryColombian conflict Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 I use the term “mechanism” to translate the Spanish term “dispostivo,” which is used by the Colombian Truth Commission to refer to the structures of power, systems of belief and education, narratives and procedures that underlie the Colombian conflict (CEV Citation2022a, 40, 575).2 This reference to “omissions” in the definition of torture is not explained in the Final Report. It seems to refer to the fact that torture often occurs in circumstances when governmental or political institutions do not act as they should.3 In On Violence, Arendt defines the relationship between power and violence as follows: “ … politically speaking, it is insufficient to say that power and violence are not the same. Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance” (Citation1970, 56). Considering that in Colombia, to a large extent, the responsibility for cases of torture falls on the Armed Forces (CEV Citation2022b, 307–309), as happened for example in the case of the Palace of Justice (CEV/FA Citation2022, 34), the reference to Arendt’s perspective on power is of special relevance: according to this perspective, it could be said that the practice of torture by legitimate political institutions, or groups outside the law acting under the acquiescence of political institutions, would be the manifestation of utter political impotence. Precisely for this reason, because it is in a sense an expression of political impotence, torture is often carried out in secret or hidden from the public view.4 As Di Cesare explains it, in order to describe the particular type of abuse that characterizes torture, Améry uses the uncommon German expression “Verfleischlichung,” which would mean “the complete reduction of the human being to flesh” (Citation2018, 67).5 It is worth recalling that for Merleau-Ponty “ … the flesh we are speaking of is not matter” (Citation1968, 146).6 As Améry argues, torture generates a loss of trust in the world because it violates the social contract according to which the other person “ … will respect my physical, and with it also my metaphysical being” (Citation1980, 28).7 As Améry puts it: “Whoever was tortured, stays tortured” (Citation1980, 34).8 Adriana Cavarero (Citation2009) accurately expresses what this idea involves as follows: “ … torture is an intensely malign form of human relationship, its most radical perversion. Not just because the torture victim, stripped from all autonomy, is forced to participate or ‘collaborate' in the mechanism of his suffering but above all because the victim, in his relationship with his torturer, is here a vulnerable person held in place and unilaterally exposed only to vulnus” (Citation2009, 114).9 María del Rosario Acosta examines how torture involves a sort of colonization of the body and dispossession of one’s own voice, in her essay “Ser despojado de la voz propia. De una fenomenología feminista de la voz a una aproximación a la violencia política desde la escucha” (Citation2020).10 This is, in part, what Améry suggests in his essay on resentment: “Resentment blocks the exit to the genuine human dimension, the future” (Citation1980, 68).Additional informationNotes on contributorsGustavo Gómez PérezGustavo Gómez Pérez is Associate Professor in Philosophy, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá. His PhD in Philosophy was earned at Boston College with his BA and MA in Philosophy from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. In addition, he earned a BA in Fine Arts from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and was a Fulbright Grantee in 2009. His research interests are in the intercrossings of phenomenology, political philosophy and aesthetics. His most recent publications are “The Gestural Dimension of Artistic Practice: Performance, Politics and Responsibility in Zoitsa Noriega’s installation-performance Daphne” in Violence and Resistance, Art and Politics in Colombia edited by Zepke, S. and Alvarado, N (Palgrave Macmillan) and “La técnica como phármakon: Sloterdijk y la cuestión del humanismo” in Umbrales críticos. Aportes a la pregunta por los límites de lo humano, edited by Gustavo Chirolla, Héctor Salinas, and Ana Maria Rosas (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana). In 2022 he co-edited Mentira y engaño en política. Perspectivas filosóficas y diálogos desde la academia with Juan Samuel Santos Castro (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana).