Mohamedu uld Slahijev Dnevnik iz Gvantanama: svjedočenje kao otpor
Mohamedou ould Slahiʼs Guantánamo Diary: Testimony as Resistance

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary as an important recent instance of textual resistance through life narratives, first focusing on some key traits Slahi’s Diary shares with Latin American testimonio, such as the typically postcolonial political agenda of resistance through interpolation of nonliterary and subaltern voices in the sphere of literary representation, as well as the transformation of the signs of imperial dominantion into pedagogical remiders of the dramatic struggle for meaning on a textual plane, most clearly exemplified through numerous redactions in the text of Slahi’s Diary. The principal importance of Guantánamo Diary, the paper further argues, lies in its complex treatment of the relationship between submission and resistance and the dramatic process of transformation of the incarcerated subject, exposed to various forms of torture and interrogation, into the agent of his personal narrative. A testimonial narrative like Slahi’s Diary in that context constitutes an act of resistance through transformation of the narrating subject from a passive and silent recipient of violence into an active agent and interpreter of the violent reality he currently inhabits as well as the broader political circumstances that led to his incarceration.

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