Homebody's Monologue

The foregoing analysis has shown how the slash in Homebody/Kabul has multiple implications, ranging from merely structural issues to political and philosophical questions. On the plot level, the title does, of course, indicate the play’s division into two parts with different settings. But more importantly, the title’s juxtaposition of the two terms simultaneously separated and connected through the slash actually encapsulates some of the play’s central topics: the symbolic and systemic violence inherent in the creation of totalizing boundaries, becoming a tool in an imperialistic struggle for domination; the dependence of a stable hegemonic identity on its difference from a projected (and excluded) homogeneous Other; and, conversely, the questionable nature of the supposed integrity of the self, always already challenged by the heterogeneity of inappropriable alterity.
Although this article is primarily a textual analysis of the play as published in book form, one can imagine how these issues affect an audience. The Homebody’s monologue confronts the spectators with the

Adding to the perturbing effect of this atmosphere, the total disappearance of the titular character (who has established a certain rapport with the audience in her hour-long monologue) is bound to be disconcerting. The fact that her fate is never clarified, denying the audience closure, leaves them with an uncertainty that inevitably challenges the their sense of wholeness, creating an epistemic loss that is in tune with the Homebody’s loss of