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• Institutionalized Violence and Oppression:Ambiguity, Complicity and Resistance in El Campo and The Conduct of Life
• Araceli González Crespán (bio)

Argentinian playwright Griselda Gambaro's El Campo, written in 1967 and first performed in 1968, is a play that portrays institutionalized violence through ambiguity, double meanings, duplicity, lies, and lack of reference.¹ Upon his arrival to what he presumes to be a new job as an accountant, the main character Martín will slowly realize that, instead, he is a prisoner in a concentration camp. What happens on stage and what the victims experience is never explicit, so both the protagonist and the audience are confronted with the visible, physical consequences of such violence combined with the psychological terror induced by lack of definition, vagueness, and ignorance. Oppression deprives the victims and the audience of any sense of comprehension and renders them powerless.

The Conduct of Life premiered almost twenty years later, in 1985. Cuban American Maria Irene Fornes set the scene in "A Latin American country. The present."² The general, diffuse reference to place and time does not incorporate more specific details other than the performance space: the house of Orlando, an army lieutenant that will soon be a commander. He participates in tortures and abuse not only as part of his professional duties but also privately, at home, where he keeps Nena, a twelve-year-old destitute girl he has kidnapped. Here, the victimizer sadistically replicates the institutional abuse in the personal domain. Other characters in the household, namely his wife Leticia, are at first unaware of the existence of Nena although her complicity plays a role in the sustained abuse of the victim.

The arrival of the new millennium seemed to bring with it the illusion that military regimes were a thing of the past and that democracy was the [End Page 109] destiny, if not reality, across America. In the continent, threats to political stability seemed to come from afar, with Islamic terrorism identified as the external enemy; however, in the second decade of the century, we have already witnessed the surge of anti-democratic reactions based on demagogy and populism from within the system. For example, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil or Donald Trump in the United States, both became presidents by virtue of democratic elections but have pushed the limits of what democracy means by questioning the voting process. Prior to the 2022 election, President Bolsonaro—who openly defended Brazil's military dictatorship—uttered constant baseless accusations of fraud in the electoral system, attacked freedom of speech, and repeatedly threatened the Supreme Court.³ At the moment of writing these lines, in 2023, Trump's refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election has had such an effect that, for the first time in United States' modern history, "the dominant faction in one of two major parties has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to accept antidemocratic means to advance its interests."⁴

Living in a world that seems far away from the political unrest that facilitated the advent of dictatorships in Latin America but that experiences other kinds of political threats to democracy, it can be illuminating to interrogate the representation of violence, repression, and oppression in these two plays. This article aims to explore different modes of perpetuating institutionalized violence and to identify forms of resistance to it by comparing and contrasting these two plays that present American oppressions. This can be a reminder of the disastrous effects of upturning a system based on the recognition of equality before the law for all citizens, and it can stimulate awareness and resistance by providing a critical perspective on the challenges of those assaults on freedom.

A Question of Style: Theatrical Form in Griselda Gambaro and Maria Irene Fornes

Gambaro's and Fornes' highly original signature styles and theatrical strengths present a challenge to any easy definition; both dramaturgies resist description because of the variety of modes and themes each playwright has covered in their extensive theatrical productions. When compared, there are some striking similarities in their playwriting careers: [End Page 110] both were basically self-taught and started to get involved in theatre relatively late. Gambaro was mostly trained by reading...

中文翻译：

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制度化的暴力和压迫：埃尔坎波的模糊性、共谋性和抵抗以及生活的行为

以下是内容的简短摘录，以代替摘要：

• 制度化的暴力和压迫：埃尔坎波的模糊性、共谋性和抵抗以及生活的行为
• 阿拉塞利·冈萨雷斯·克雷斯潘（简介）

阿根廷剧作家格里塞尔达·甘巴罗 (Griselda Gambaro) 的《El Campo》于 1967 年创作，于 1968 年首演，这部戏剧通过含糊、双重含义、口是心非、谎言和缺乏参考来描绘制度化的暴力。¹当主角马丁接到他认为是会计师的新工作后，他会慢慢意识到，他实际上是集中营中的囚犯。舞台上发生的事情以及受害者的经历从来都不是明确的，因此主角和观众都面临着这种暴力的可见的身体后果，以及由于缺乏定义、模糊和无知而引起的心理恐惧。压迫剥夺了受害者和观众的任何理解感，使他们变得无能为力。

《生活的行为》在大约二十年后的 1985 年首映。古巴裔美国人玛丽亚·艾琳·福恩斯 (Maria Irene Fornes) 在《拉丁美洲国家。现在》中设置了场景。²对地点和时间的笼统、分散的提及并没有包含除表演空间之外的更具体的细节：奥兰多的房子，一位即将成为指挥官的陆军中尉。他参与酷刑和虐待，不仅是作为其职业职责的一部分，而且私下里，他在家中关押着他绑架的 12 岁贫困女孩尼娜。在这里，施害者残忍地在个人领域复制了机构虐待。家庭中的其他人物，即他的妻子莱蒂西亚，起初并不知道内娜的存在，尽管她的共谋在受害者的持续虐待中发挥了作用。

新千年的到来似乎带来了一种幻觉，即军事政权已成为过去，民主即使不是现实，也是美国的命运[完第109页] 。在非洲大陆，政治稳定的威胁似乎来自远方，伊斯兰恐怖主义被视为外部敌人；然而，在本世纪第二个十年，我们已经目睹了体制内部基于煽动和民粹主义的反民主反应的激增。例如，巴西的贾尔·博尔索纳罗和美国的唐纳德·特朗普都通过民主选举成为总统，但通过质疑投票过程突破了民主的极限。2022年大选之前，公开捍卫巴西军事独裁统治的博尔索纳罗总统不断对选举制度舞弊提出毫无根据的指控，攻击言论自由，并多次威胁最高法院。³在 2023 年写下这些文字时，特朗普拒绝接受 2020 年选举结果，其影响如此之大，以至于在美国现代历史上，“两个主要政党之一的主导派系首次”一再表明它愿意接受反民主手段来促进其利益。” ⁴

生活在一个似乎远离促进拉丁美洲独裁政权出现的政治动荡的世界，但民主也经历着其他类型的政治威胁，质疑这两个国家中暴力、镇压和压迫的表现可能会很有启发性。播放。本文旨在通过比较和对比这两部展现美国压迫的戏剧，探讨使制度化暴力长期存在的不同模式，并确定对其的抵抗形式。这可以提醒人们，推翻一个基于承认所有公民在法律面前人人平等的制度会带来灾难性影响，并且可以通过对这些侵犯自由的挑战提供批判性视角来激发人们的认识和抵抗。

风格问题：格里塞尔达·甘巴罗和玛丽亚·艾琳·福尼斯的戏剧形式

甘巴罗和福恩斯高度原创的标志性风格和戏剧优势对任何简单的定义提出了挑战；这两种戏剧都拒绝描述，因为每位剧作家在其广泛的戏剧作品中涵盖了多种模式和主题。比较起来，他们的编剧生涯有一些惊人的相似之处：[完第110页]两人基本上都是自学成才，涉足戏剧也较晚。甘巴罗主要是通过阅读来接受训练的……