The last dance

An essay on death in the intelligent homosexual's guide to capitalism and socialism and a key to the Scriptures by Tony Kushner

Abstract

A possible "theory" about Tony Kushner's theater is supported, in some way, by the aporia of death. The end, far beyond the political is visible in his most prominent plays. The meaning of this end tries to make itself clear through his ghostly characters, characters that are reproduced in all his theatrical productions. The ambivalence of life is consistent with the idea of the possibility of haunting. What exists after death? Kushner has never tried to find a concrete answer to this question, but he places characters on stage who, through his spectropolitics, try to remember the past. This essay is about this spectropolitics: when ghosts come on stage not only to remember the past, but as a warning sign about the future. The Homosexual's Guide centers on the Italian-American Marcantonio family. Fearing the onset of Alzheimer's, Gus, the patriarch, asks his family for support in trying to pursue an assisted suicide after a failed self-destruction attempt. This text tries to weave a link amongst death, politics and the loss of memory as a collective process of erasure of American history.