The Gray Zone of Victims and Perpetrators in Peter Weiss's The Investigation

Utilizing the writings of Primo Levi, Wolfgang Sofsky, and Giorgio Agamben, this article analyses the representation of physical and moral mutilation in relation to the gray zone of forced complicity in Peter Weiss's The Investigation: Oratorio in 11 Cantos (1965). I begin by discussing the play's graphic descriptions of physical mutilation in relation to Agamben's description of the concentration camp as a site for the production of "bare life," with an emphasis on his theorization of the Muselmann. After outlining the system of graduated power as a force of moral collapse that sought to erase the boundary between victims and perpetrators, I examine the extreme gray zone occupied by the Sonderkommando and the locus of testimony that bears witness to the physical and moral abjection that occurred in the camp.