Knowing the Suffering of Others: Legal Perspectives on Pain and Its Meanings

4. Disappearing History: Scenes of Trauma in the Theater of Human Rights - Cathy Caruth

4 Disappearing History Scenes oftrauma in thetheater of Human rights Cathy Caruth Ariel Dorfman’s 1991 play Death and the Maiden is set in the present time in a country that “is probably Chile”but “could be any country that has just departed from a dictatorship.”1 Taking place in a remote beach house primarily on a single night and day, the play follows the actions of a woman, Paulina, who was tortured by the previous regime and whose husband, Gerardo, a human rights lawyer, has just been appointed to head a truth commission established by the new transitional government. Surprised in the middle of the night by Roberto,a stranger who has given Gerardo a ride home and returns unexpectedly at midnight to give Gerardo back his spare tire, Paulina believes she recognizes the voice and idioms of the man who tortured her while she was blindfolded. She manages to capture Roberto in the house and stage a “trial”at gunpoint in which,with the coerced cooperation of her husband, she forces from the stranger a confession, while playing a tape of the Schubert quartet that was played while she was raped. Unsatisfied by the “confession,”Paulina considers killing him, an act left suspended in the play, the last scene of which ends in a theater where the Schubert String Quartet No.14,also known as “Death and the Maiden,”is being performed and where Paulina believes she sees Roberto (or his ghost) staring at her in a phantasmic light. Written during the transitional government that followed the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and produced for the first time the year before the appearance of the report by the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation assigned to document the regime’s practice of “disappearing” people,2 the play evokes, in its emphasis on documentation and confession, the role of recovering truth in the return to democracy and human rights.3 Structured, moreover, by a series of stagings—Roberto plays the role of a Disappearing History 171 helpful neighbor to Gerardo; Paulina stages the torture and trial of Roberto;4 and Gerardo stages a testimonial interview for Paulina—the play specifically links the question of truth to the nature of its appearance, or the role of “performance” in the undoing and reconstitution of justice. At the heart of performance in the play,I will suggest,and specifically in the centrality of a particular kind of performance—the performance of the Schubert quartet, which names the play and serves as a central part of its story—is a struggle between the reappearance of democracy and the disappearance of history, between the reenactment of trauma and the possible performance of a new kind of listening. Return and Disappearance The play begins with the encounter between two kinds of return: the return home of Gerardo,the human rights lawyer,who meets his wife,Paulina,herself returned years before from her own disappearance and torture.Gerardo clearly represents, in the play, the “return to democracy” that should be enabled by the truth commission he has just been appointed to lead, and in particular the role of human rights law in the appearance of truth.5 “We will find out [what happened],”Gerardo tells his wife,“Find out everything. . . . We’ll publish our conclusions. There will be an official report. What happened will be established objectively, so no one will ever be able to deny it” (Death and the Maiden, hereafter cited as DM, 10). But the truth appearing in the report will exclude one particular mode of truth, the truth, precisely embodied by Paulina’s very return: Paulina: This Commission you’re named to. Doesn’t it only investigate cases that ended in death? Gerardo: It’s appointed to investigate human rights violations that ended in death or the presumption of death, yes. Paulina: Only the most serious cases? Gerardo: The idea is that if we can throw light on the worst crimes, other abuses will come to light. Paulina: Only the most serious? Gerardo: Let’s say the cases that are beyond–let’s say, repair. Paulina: Beyond repair. Irreparable, huh? Gerardo: I don’t like to talk about this, Paulina. (DM 9) The truth of the “disappearances”in the report of the commission excludes, it turns out, the disappearances of those who returned: the living testimony 172 Caruth of the disappeared who actually reappear in the new democracy. Echoing the language...