Monological Discourse and the Creation of Villains: a staging of witnesses after 9/11.

This paper comprises an attempt at a theory of audience reception as concerns the need to understand recent videotaped stagings of terrorism. An analysis of this latest paradigm of political theatre—which presents villainous monologues that performatively blur the boundaries between media, culture, and politics—requires a focus on the spectator, who functions simultaneously, and self-consciously, as observer and performer. I will examine rhetorical and visual features of one particular staging and suggest the applicability of critical theory to this phenomenon. As the fracturing of certainty undermines the spectator's sense of truth and reality, the sense of subjectivity and responsibility is reconfigured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]