The horrors of capitalism in Reza Abdoh’s The Law of Remains (1991) | Intellect Skip to content
1981
Volume 14, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2040-3275
  • E-ISSN: 2040-3283

Abstract

Reza Abdoh’s (1991) is a play replete with violence, cruelty, murder and gore. While many critics view the playwright’s horror-inflected plays as reflective of an Artaudian philosophy that attempts to uncover the essential human ‘truth’ underlying societal ills, I view as an exercise in dialectical horror. That is, a play that harnesses the grammar of gore and excess to critique capitalism’s disempowering and rapacious qualities while highlighting how consciousness of such qualities could galvanize positive opposition to oppression. In this article, I examine some of the play’s key moments of horror through a Marxist lens to uncover an anti-capitalist structure of feeling that lay in stark opposition to dominant neo-liberal forces in the early 1990s.

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2023-05-24
2024-04-19
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): decadence; drama studies; HIV/AIDS; Marxism; materialism; neo-liberalism; Reagan
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