the stretching rack
[FONT="<font><font class="">Century Gothic</font></font>"]The Rack:
the rack still remains a famous symbol of medieval times and has been used or hinted on while interrogation. also from a realistic point of view it is an amazing form of human torture techniques
the famous revolutionary anne askew was among the few notable people who are known to have been tortured on the rack.
not confessing that the torturer could stretch the limbs more as they could endure.
,,no safe word"
It's hard to believe, but the human body, limbs and skin could be very resistant to breakage.
of course, most of these contraptions today can be seen either in a museum or in medieval sexploitation movies of medieval torture.
the stretching scene in Akellare Inquisition is such an example. i really like it that it looks so impressively horrorfying.
not only the physical pain, also the psychological torture of expecting they have a different effects. the pain of torment leads into the moment of continuousness, into the physical increasing pain. discomfort is being perceived by the different effects ...the joints of the wrists and shoulders suffer more because they are smaller joints, the ankles, knees, etc. don't feel as stretched.
This special attention to a visit to the torture chamber is not for the faint hearted. It displays interesting and gruesome implements of punishment, including a STRETCHING RACK, cages, a bed of nails, nailed barrel and spiked chair.
The serene face of the iron Maiden is supported by a horrible, larger wheel than life size hinged and spiked casing to hold a live body. The thumb screws, chains, leg irons, cages, man traps and branding irons remind of a world long past.
The victims trembles in fear. innocent and guilty alike -- an abandoned castle and subjecting to grisly torments deep within its underground tunnels.
Those who discover the terrible secret behind the disappearances and deaths don't live long enough to tell it. The visitors will all confront their fates in the torture chamber.
Pain, fear of what is to come, of the unknown next instant; the shame of being made helpless, abject before the sadist/torturer/interrogator) the disgust, the pulling away inherent to such awful intimacy of self and other.
Bodies, tortured or otherwise, are flesh, but also fluid and relational.
Capacities for sadistically barbaric action.
Bodies are thus sites of potential unlocked in encounter, in the collision of surfaces, in the affects
connecting body to world and world to body. But in thinking of the torture chamber.
Affect is not restricted to the abstract.
Each involves bodily reactions; they are felt on the surface of the skin, in the movement of the face, the set of the shoulders, the widening of the eyes.
But these affects are also relational. They are messy, sticky, visceral; they exist not only on the surface of the skin and the movement of muscle but are passed on in the encounter between one body and another.
In the torture chamber, four affects dominate. Disgust – the torturer’s disgust at the abject victim, a necessary dehumanizing, one felt keenly by the victim and often turning to disgust at the self. Fear – the victim’s fear of the torturer and of their own weakness.
The torturer breathing in that fear, fuelled by it, aided and abetted by it, and yet cut too by the fear of going too far or of failing to break the victim. Shame – the shame of being made abject before another, the shame of subjecting another to such horror, the shame of the other’s body made violently intimate, whether victim or torturer. And, above all, pain.
The victim of “pain through torture experiences his body as never before.
The STRETCHING RACK, from a realistic point of view it is an amazing form of human torture techniques,that the sadist/torturer/interrogator could stretch the limbs more as they could endure. The dynamics of consciousness in a state of uncertainty and fear of the anticipation of a helplessness while being kept in positionings and applications on the rack is a second level.
The physical state can be observed apparently during this process.
The legs and ankles are stretched, the feeling of elongation extends from the
thighs over the hips to all parts of the muscles and ligaments. The skin of the
ankle and the associated fibers are stretched. the breast is flattened, the
chest wall provides visible the connection to the thorax, abdomen and spine.
The chest the lungs pull themselves together, gasping for air. the ropes are
being pulled more and more tight round the limbs of the victim.
“Looking for an exchange of thoughts about the Rack”[/FONT]
There are a variety of kinds of background report to the real rack experiences. Who are dealing specifically with this torture device and who are looking for a purposeful exchange of thoughts.
A pool of thoughts only exists if interested Rack enthusiasts swap content on the subject and participate.
welcome contributions of are firsthand accounts from both, torturers and victims about physical, psychological and otherwise experiences of being on the rack in use are especially a welcome gift.