Det syge USA

Afkoblede skæbner i litteraturen

Forfattere

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/kok.v49i131.127675

Nøgleord:

Sygdom, USA, litteratur, prekaritet, Angels in America, AIDS, smerte, opiater, Maggie Boylan

Resumé

Acknowledging the significance of the COVID-19 pandemic as an exacerbating factor for precarious US communities, this article reads Tony Kushner’s critically acclaimed play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1992-95) and Michael Henson’s collection of short stories Maggie Boylan (2015) alongside Susan Sontag (Illness as Metaphor), Jasbir Puar (The Right to Maim) and Lauren Berlant (“Slow Death”). The play and the short story collection represent examples of critiques of a deep-rooted disorder that characterizes the precaritizing American social and political system. From the severely mishandled AIDS crisis in Reagan’s conservative United States to the equally disastrous management of the opioid and meth epidemics in the 21st century, American society and politicians are failing their citizens, a failure reflected in and critiqued by literary texts. Whereas Angels in America is an overtly political drama, in which marginalized people come together to respond to political erasure and violence with imaginative countercultural utopianism, Maggie Boylan traces the gradual decay and corruption of a contemporary American community, functioning as a microcosm of the Unites States as a whole. This society is plagued by several crippling “epidemics” and “crises” that leave bodies broken and communities in tatters. Despite glimmers of hope, Kushner and Henson paint a grim picture of a sickness at the core of American society.

Forfatterbiografier

Marianne Kongerslev, Institut for Kultur og Læring, Aalborg Universitet

Marianne Kongerslev, lektor ved Institut for Kultur og Læring, Aalborg Universitet. Har skrevet ph.d.-afhandling om nordamerikanske indfødte litteraturer og køn. Hun har udgivet artikler om bl.a. amerikansk litteratur, performancekunst, køn, seksualitet, racialisering i USA, hvidhed og affekt. Var fra 2014-15 gæste-ph.d.-studerende ved UC Berkeley, Californien. Artiklen er en del af et igangværende forskningsprojekt om affekt, hvidhed og prekarisering i amerikansk litteratur, som er støttet af Carlsbergfondet. 

Clara Juncker, Institut for Kulturvidenskaber, Syddansk Universitet

Clara Juncker, lektor ved Center for Amerikanske Studier, Institut for Kulturvidenskaber, Syddansk Universitet (Odense). Ph. D., Tulane University, New Orleans. Har udgivet doktordisputatsen Through Random Doors They Wandered: Women Writing the South (2002) om sydstatslitteratur og en lang række artikler om sydstatslitteratur og –kultur i tidsskrifter som Southern Studies, The Southern Literary Review, The Mississippi Quarterly, The Southern Quarterly, The Literature/Film Quarterly, Xavier Review og i forskellige antologier om Sydstaterne. Hun var senest medredaktør på og bidragsyder til essaysamlingen Southern Exposure (2017) og arrangerede med Marianne Kongerslev konferencen ”Southern Disruptions” i 2019.

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Publiceret

2021-06-25

Citation/Eksport

Kongerslev, M., & Juncker, C. (2021). Det syge USA: Afkoblede skæbner i litteraturen. K&K - Kultur Og Klasse, 49(131), 193–212. https://doi.org/10.7146/kok.v49i131.127675

Nummer

Årg. 49 Nr. 131 (2021): Sygdom

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Artikler

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Tidsskriftet følger dansk ophavsret.