Det syge USA

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