The Performance of Killing and the Ethical Potential of Perpetrator’s Testimony: The Poetics of Witnessing in The Act of Killing

This paper explores the ethical potential of perpetrator testimony in Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary The Act of Killing. On September 30, 1965, Indonesia’s Suharto mobilized the illegal paramilitary group to massacre over a million members of the Communist Party. These illegal paramilitary leaders, far from being punished, continue to wield significant influence at the center of power with the government’s open support. Oppenheimer’s camera gazes precisely at these paramilitary members. Oppenheimer provides them with a stage to proudly showcase their memories of the massacre while suggesting turning their experiences into a film. The Act of Killing candidly captures the perpetrator testimony and the reenactment of the acts of killing, while excluding the voice of the victims thoroughly from the screen. However, as the perpetrators’ testimonies, reenactments, filming process, and interviews accumulate, the perpetrators’ narratives internally disintegrate. This paper analyzes this self-deconstruction process of the perpetrator narrative through Brecht’s “alienation effect” and Derrida’s poetics of witnessing.