Looking at the festering imbroglio that is steadily worsening in Iraq, one is forced to think out of the box and find some means to make sense of it all. We look for books and theories that can perhaps explain this mess that has confounded even the most jaded American critic among us.

One book that immediately comes to mind is Darius Rejali's ( photo ) landmark study of the complex psychological and political relations that are at work in the practice of modern state-sanctioned torture and abuse, Torture and Modernity In Iran .

Rejali's work looks at the historical process of the normalisation of torture in Iran, from the early Qajar period right up to the Pehlavi regime and the post-revolutionary regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. Contrary to what the title may suggest, this is no Iran-bashing tome. Rejali employs the methodology and praxis of Foucauldian historical-archaeology to unearth the dynamics of power, torture and abuse and he shows how torture has become a routinised and normalised practice in the modern era, as ordinary as tax collection and politicians spinning tales for the media.

Torture, during the pre-modern era, Rejali argues, was very much a public affair. From the drawing and quartering of pirates to the beheading of dissenters in London and Paris, the torture and mutilation of prisoners and enemies of the state was something that the feudal monarchs did in the open, as a vivid and public attestation to their power and ability to exercise it.