Résumés
Abstract
In May 2015, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr was released from the Bowden Institution in Alberta. Khadr’s return to society followed 14 years of incarceration for an act that he may not have committed, which may not have been a crime, which took place while he was technically a child, and which was judged by a military tribunal that has questionable status in Canadian law.
This article argues that Khadr’s long imprisonment was a political decision by US and Canadian authorities that required them to use performativity to suspend the law, depriving Khadr of his rights under American law, the Canadian Charter, and various protocols of international law. This use of performance to undermine law exposes a performative gap in the law: a space in the law that allows it to be moved and shaped by performative acts. Through these acts, Khadr became effectively stateless for a period in time: a citizen-in-exception. Building from Giorgio Agamben’s theory of the state of exception, this paper draws out the role played by performativity in the suspension of law by law. Importantly, the process that led to Khadr’s situation was racially charged from beginning to end. His situation is one manifestation of the way that Muslims have been “cast out” of Western law, as Sherene Razack puts it, since 9/11.
Résumé
En mai 2015, Omar Khadr, un ancien détenu de Guantanamo Bay, a obtenu son congé de l’établissement de Bowden, en Alberta. Ce retour à la société survenait après 14 ans d’incarcération pour un acte que Khadr n’avait peut-être pas commis, qui n’était peut-être pas un acte criminel, qui avait eu lieu alors qu’il était techniquement encore enfant, et pour lequel il avait été jugé par un tribunal militaire dont le statut, en droit canadien, était douteux.
Dans cet article, Matt Jones soutient que la longue incarcération de Khadr était une décision politique prise par des autorités américaines et canadiennes qui contraignait ces parties à recourir à la performativité pour suspendre la loi, privant ainsi Khadr de ses droits en vertu du droit américain, de la Charte canadienne et de divers protocoles relevant du droit international. Ce recours à la performance pour saper le droit, affirme Jones, met en évidence un vide performatif : un espace qui permettrait de façonner la loi au moyen d’actes performatifs. Et en raison de ces actes, Khadr s’est retrouvé apatride pendant un certain temps, un citoyen d’exception. En partant de la théorie d’état d’exception de Giorgio Agamben, Jones s’intéresse au rôle de la performativité dans la suspension de droits en vertu de la loi. Il rappelle aussi que le processus ayant mené à la situation de Khadr était entaché de racisme du début à la fin. Son issue illustre la façon dont les musulmans ont été, pour citer Sherene Razack, « évincés » du droit occidental depuis les attentats du 11 septembre.
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Parties annexes
Biographical note
Matt Jones is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies, where he researches war, terrorism, and race in performance. His current project, “War/Noise: Sonic Dramaturgy in Activist Performance during the Vietnam War,” is part of Gatherings Archival and Oral Histories of Performance. His dissertation, The Shock and Awe of the Real: Political Performance in an Age of War and Terror, is a transnational study of theatre, live art, protests, and digital media installations about the recent conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond. His writing has appeared in SubStance, alt.theatre, the Globe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette, This Magazine, and Canadian Dimension, and he is the co-editor, with Barry Freeman, of a special issue of Canadian Theatre Review about “Post-Truth” in performance. His article, “Sarin Gas Heartbreak: Theatre and Post-Truth Warfare in Syria” is forthcoming in Theatre Journal. As a playwright and devisor, his work includes Dracula in a Time of Climate Change, The Mysterious Case of the Flying Anarchist, and the collective creation Death Clowns in Guantánamo Bay. mattjones.space.
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