ABSTRACT

The interrogation scenes of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party are often interpreted as absurd or symbolic. However, I argue that the scenes provoke recognition of complicity and theatrically position the audience as interrogator and interrogated through use of indeterminacy, laughter, nonsense, and terror. Moreover, torture techniques from the CIA Interrogation & Manipulation Manual are presciently executed in the play. The play’s interrogators deploy nonsense and indeterminacy as torture, destroying the ontological certainty of the interrogated, and these methods mirror the CIA Manual’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ technique and ‘theory’ of ‘regression’. In this essay, real interrogations emerge as dangerously theatrical, and nonsense as a potential means of grievous harm. Additionally, I consider the implications of this analysis in relation to Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s memoir Guantánamo Diary. Slahi’s memoir includes multiple instances of how unsettling metaphors of fictional works are invoked or paralleled by actual interrogation and torture. Furthermore, analysis of the memoir complicates this essay’s examination of the roles of nonsense, laughter, and indeterminacy, as Slahi shows how laughter ties to normalisation, how nonsense relates to incompetence, and how that incompetence is a corollary of the fantasy of order and absolutes that interrogators enact, a fantasy with irreparable consequences.

摘要

哈罗德·品特《生日派对》中的审讯场景通常被解释为荒谬或象征性的。然而，我认为这些场景激起了对共谋的认识，并通过使用不确定性、笑声、废话和恐怖将观众戏剧性地定位为审讯者和审讯者。此外，中情局审讯和操纵手册中的酷刑技术在剧中有先见之明。该剧的审讯者将胡说八道和不确定性作为酷刑，摧毁了审讯者的本体论确定性，这些方法反映了中央情报局手册的“爱丽丝梦游仙境”技术和“回归”“理论”。在这篇文章中，真实的审讯以危险的戏剧化和胡说八道的形式出现，成为造成严重伤害的潜在手段。此外，我考虑了此分析与 Mohamedou Ould Slahi 的回忆录相关的含义关塔那摩日记。斯拉希的回忆录包括多个实例，说明虚构作品中令人不安的隐喻是如何被实际的审讯和酷刑所引用或与之相提并论的。此外，对回忆录的分析使本文对废话、笑声和不确定性的作用的研究变得复杂，因为 Slahi 展示了笑声如何与正常化联系在一起，废话如何与无能相关，以及无能如何是秩序和绝对幻想的必然结果审讯者实施的幻想具有无法弥补的后果。