The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

idding), but stemmed in crucial ways from the logic of torture for information.
The chapter proceeds as follows. The second section describes the history of witchcraft trials in
New England and Europe, and argues that the trials in Salem village resemble the latter more than the
former. The third section examines the crisis in Salem itself, locating the crucial moments in the
process that led the trials to diverge from the pattern found in New England in the mid 1600s, while
the fourth identifies those inflection points that brought this vicious cycle to a close. The fifth section
attempts to explain how this cycle was established through the lens of Kalyvasian theory on ‘political
violence’, how it was defended by the accused and accusers alike, and how the counter-narrative of
possession (rather than witchcraft) allowed this cycle to be broken once and for all; the third section
examines the links between the witch trials and torture for information, deriving implications for
torture as a means of gaining truth, and locating the effects of misinformation on this epistemic system.
I conclude with a discussion of Tituba, the West Indian slave of Rev. Samuel Parris, and her role in the
proceedings, and the question of whether or not her confession was coerced: for while the choice faced
by the accused in the trials quickly came to be seen as one of confess or die, it was Tituba’s confession
at the outset that made possible everything that came afterwards – a confession that seemingly should
have condemned her to death yet ironically saved her life.
3.2. Witchcraft in New England
The Salem witch-trials are generally understood in American culture primarily as a warning of
how the pre-empirical obsessions of a Puritan society ended in the tragic execution of 19 innocents.
The convulsions of the afflicted, the emphasis on spectral evidence, and the sudden and shocking
empowerment of (primarily young) women have spurred countless academic, quasi-academic, and
popular treatments that have attempted to explain the apparent outbreak of madness in New England as
a result of Puritan attitudes towards gender (Karlson, Reed, Kamensky), psychological processes
(Starkey, Harley), political instability and sub-rosa class conflict (Boyer and Nissenbaum) and even as
a result of food poisoning (Caporael). These arguments, however, are all essentially limited in that they
attempt to explain the case in Salem in isolation from other witch-trials in New England at that time.
And in fact the Salem trials differed strongly from what had come before in the northern colonies.
Previous trials had focused on small groups of accused witches, and generally led to a confession or
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