Jauría: Documentary fiction and the transformative potential of sexual violence testimony

Abstract

In this article, we examine the various strategies that Jauría employs to bear witness to sexual violence. Jauría’s script is based on the official court transcripts of a trial for the gang rape of a woman at the San Fermín Festival in Pamplona, Spain. Our analysis focuses on how the narration of violence from new representational frameworks questions the hegemonic paradigms in which violence makes itself intelligible. We address how sexual violence testimony, in the form of documentary fiction, has the transformative potential of appealing to a shared responsibility with the audience. To that end, we analyze the mise-en-scène and conduct a long series of interviews with the play’s actors, director and playwright. To carry out this analysis, we use the framework of ethical testimony that we apply as an analytical model both to the mise-en-scène and to the interviews conducted, which have been categorized along four dimensions of analysis. This article contributes to the current studies around the transformative potential of sexual violence testimony and ultimately proves how the testimony’s ethical dimension can transform the discursive conditions in which this type of violence is typically interpreted.