ABSTRACT
The benefit of the metaphor of theatre is its effectiveness for conceptualising the dynamics of individuals and the social as performance by exploring their psychological identities, social behaviour, rationalities that underpin the interactions and power relations that frame their relationships (see Goffmann 1956). Moreover, as the Torture Dataset already suggests, the framework of performance will be beneficial to explore the notion of spectacularity that underpins the practice of torture in Papua. The metaphor of theatre will help us analyse actors, roles, script and stage as distinct but interrelated and inseparable units of analysis. The metaphor of theatre will illustrate the dynamics of multiple agencies as ‘actors’, their multilayered narratives as ‘scripts’, their fluid interactions with one another as ‘roles’ as well as their interactions with the structural power as ‘stage’ in the torture practice in Papua. This metaphor is also effective to demonstrate that theoretically there is only a little space available to evade the theatre of torture as represented by ‘exceptions’ (see Figure 5.1). On the contrary, every individual plays a role in the torture setting directly or indirectly although this role may change over time depending on different scripts that an individual plays.
