Cultural Renditions of Guantánamo and the War on Terror

Abstract:This essay examines the Guantánamo Bay detention facility as a site and subject of intellectual and cultural production which can address aspects of the war on terror foreclosed by law and politics. The essay begins with prisoner Abu Zubaydah's recent petition to the US Supreme Court and arguments there about state secrets privilege to shield evidence of the CIA's Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) program (2002–2009) from disclosure. Drawing on Bonnie Honig's theory of democratic deliberative processes and "public things," the essay then turns to Scottish creator/actor Freda O'Byrne's one woman play, Rendition, for its efforts to make the public secret of the RDI program into a forum for public deliberation. Rendition's blend of evidentiary and imaginative discourses introduces the dossier's larger themes of how prisoners used cultural expression to resist and survive abuse; cultural production as a window into Guantánamo's situatedness in the Global South; and the obligations that come with cultural production for those who survive their Guantánamo imprisonment.