Lost in the delirium of consumerism Marx plucks out his eyes in a fit of lunacy, he can no longer stand the sight of history’s final events. He claws at his own face in a paroxysm of rage and despair. In his head, the spectres that haunt him and every object he owns are being pulled towards his bleeding sockets. They slip and slide into his head, blooded but not bowed by his crazed and brainsick actions. In his head emancipatory Marxism is now reduced to slavery, the opening of all borders has frozen his followers into indecision and the world is churned in his milky madness.
The curtain now closes on this act of depravity.
There is an interlude while the scene is changed and the muffled sound of furniture being dragged across the stage is heard from behind the curtain.
The curtain rises.
A ventriloquist with speaking table now opens a final act. This act of stagecraft is designed to sooth this audience's nerves, the people are unsettled, their world is being decentred and they crave for entertainment.
The puppeteered table speaks of the past, present and future.
“The thing of the first, the foremost of all spectres is the ghost of labour. The memory of your grandfathers and your fathers in their rolled up sleeves and working boots, digging and shifting and pulling and pushing, grinding and cutting and fishing and killing, each with their shadow doppelganger, digging and shifting and pulling and pushing, grinding and cutting and fishing and killing. These are the ghosts of your past.”
“ The thing of the second; the identification of the place of now.”
The ventriloquist extends his right index finger and points to a spot at the head of the table. The table continues with the speech.
“From the ceiling nineteen feet six and a half inches, from the deck two feet eight inches, from the proscenium arch to the left seventeen feet four inches, from the proscenium arch to the right sixteen feet six inches; located at latitude 51.507741 longitude -0.096845, elevation thirty five feet. These are the instruments of my power, my political legitimacy and my property rights.”
“The thing of the third; the technologies of religion. The rituals of prayer punctuate the days, a mechanical inflection to the promise. The promise of the heroic guerrilla, the promise of Che in all his guises on ten million ‘T’ shirts and student posters, the promise of a vision of future past.”
A dog walks confidently onto the stage and is soon seen licking at the shadow of the table.
The ventriloquist opens a drawer in the table and takes out a map, he unfolds it and sits gazing intently at its contours. The table’s disembodied voice continues.
“This map holds within itself all the dimensions of democracy, it orders the limits of its power, contains the ghosts of its past and produces the simulacrum of the now. However, the time for these depictions will soon be over and we wish a last hurrah to all those sailors who plotted out their early voyages, who sailed to unknown shores to give us views of distant worlds and future possibilities.”
The ventriloquist starts to carefully tear out a shape from the opened out map. Gradually we realise this shape is that of a dog, a dog that has within it roads, and mountains and seas. It is a multi-headed dog that looks both ways and inwards into souls and into consciousness. It is the time for conclusions and endings, for the revealing of the moral of this story and the purpose of its plot.
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