@article{ref1,
title="Politics, pathology, suicide, and social fates: Tony Kushner's the Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures",
journal="Modern drama",
year="2016",
author="Gullette, M.M.",
volume="59",
number="2",
pages="231-248",
abstract="Many older characters in recent plays become, or think they will become, &quot;demented.&quot; Being old - the oldest person in the dramatis personae - is suddenly glued to cognitive weakness. The cultural message now spreading throughout our frightened world is this: if a person this old has this future as a fate, considering suicide is almost obligatory. This destiny is one of the not-so-subtle messages emanating from a group of such plays, and from the one that this essay focuses on, Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. How is it possible that a visionary who rallied so courageously on behalf of people with HIV/ AIDS in the early 1990s fails to find a way of defending a character (and by extension, people) with mild cognitive impairment (MCI)? Kushner's dramatic choices - especially his protagonist Gus's noble political despair - might have made superfluous the choice of Alzheimer's to drive his mourning-play. The real illness of this character is neither Alzheimer's nor a death drive but the impotence of radical activism, individual and collective. © University of Toronto.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1712-5286",
doi="10.3138/md.59.2.6",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/md.59.2.6"
}