Storytelling and Truth-Telling: Testimonial Narratives in The Road to Guantánamo and Guantánamo: ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom’

This chapter analyzes two of the earliest cultural productions responding to the prison camps built at Guantánamo under the War on Terror: the docudrama film The Road to Guantánamo (2006) and the verbatim play Guantánamo: ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom’ (2004). It discusses testimony as a response to the narratives about the camps offered by the U.S. state, more specifically as a means of countering the characterization of prisoners as anonymous, vicious killers who deserve indefinite detention. Finally, it argues that both of these works expose the camp’s radical depersonalization, while creating new conditions of possibility by elucidating truths that had been systematically withheld from the public.