6 Contextual problems
What happens when someone controls language but is later controlled by others’ language because one is no longer a powerful linguist due to a translation? That is, then, what does Kushner say about a speaker who becomes spoke about because of a change in context? Homebody—the protagonist in Tony Kushner’s play, Homebody/Kabul, which is about a woman who goes over to Afghanistan and is reportedly murdered—first performs this implosion and collapse for us in London, not on the streets of war-torn Kabul, but in her “comfortable chair, in [her] pleasant room.”1 Her language is unique: a pastiche of eclectic words. ...
