Power over Bare Life: The War on Terror in Post-9/11 British and American War and Political Drama.

The article discusses the concept of sovereign power over individuals presented in three contemporary British and American theatre plays, specifically in Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom by Vera Brittain and Gillian Slovo, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's Lidless and Yussef El Guindi's Back of the Throat. The focus of the paper is on the representation of suspected terrorists, their imprisonment, abuse and torture. The plays are examined from the perspective of Girard's concept of scapegoat, Foucault's biopolitics and torture, and Agamben's sovereign power over bare life and state of exception, in order to show mechanisms applied by the US government to deny the suspects of their freedom and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]