Agency and the Limitations of Claiming an Identity
I saw Angels in America performed last year and reading the plays has been an entirely new experience. Reading the plays as literary pieces has opened up opportunities to carefully examine the many meanings within lines or within single words. This course has influenced my perceptions about a number of things, but Foucault’s discussions of identity, agency and power relations are present throughout the play. I am particularly interested in the play’s discussion of identity and the way social constructionism influences perceptions of individuals and groups based on sexuality.
The scene that stands out to me in particular is in Act One, Scene 9 (pp. 48-52), when Roy Cohn is diagnosed with AIDs. I found this scene particularly powerful when I saw it performed as well, but while reading it I was totally fascinated by the way Roy characterizes the ways in which society decides who or what a person is. This scene is also poignant for it’s discussion on American society’s fixation on categorizing and labeling, something which comes up in Foucault as well.
The scene is full of dry humor that really hits home. Henry, the doctor, skirts around explaining why Roy has AIDs, seemingly unable to acknowledge that someone he thinks he knows could possibly be a (gasp!) homosexual. Roy asks Henry what he is implying in his diagnosis, a question which is loaded with what I believe to be a powerful truth about the nature of diagnosis–what comes along with having an illness is not just knowing that there is a need to seek treatment, but also there are implications for one’s identity. Diagnosis changes who a person is because of the way that all of our “selves” are constructed by the world around us. Especially in the time in which Angels in America takes place, having AIDs came along with a slew of social and personal stigmas.
As the conversation between Henry and Roy progresses, it’s interesting the way in which Roy somehow forces his own confession out of Henry rather than make it himself. He insists that Henry say that he is something that starts with an “H” and “isn’t ‘Hemophiliac'”(50). This is a really fascinating power relation that also incorporates Western culture’s fixation on confession, in conjunction with its fixation on labeling. Interestingly, Henry can’t quite make the claim as to what Roy is. He says, “Roy Cohn, you are…You have had sex with men, many many times, Roy, and one of them, or any number of them, has made you very sick. You have AIDS”(51). I was really interested in this statement. First of all, it suggests that being a homosexual is not the same thing as one’s preference in sexual partners–a pretty radical statement for Kushner to make given the popular thoughts of the time. To insist that one’s sexuality is not the same as one’s identity is (I think) honest but incredibly transgressive. Also, though, this statement suggests that a popular notion of sexuality is that it is inherent and if someone doesn’t exhibit certain “signs” then he or she must not fit the label. Henry’s inability to acknowledge Roy as a homosexual insists that social constructionism may well be a part of an individual’s “self.” Roy goes on to make the point that sexuality is not inextricably linked to identity; “Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that”(51).
Roy, who is such a rough character, totally unethical and sometimes hard to handle, ends up being a voice of incredible wisdom throughout his role in the play. In his claims that follow his refusal to believe that labels are important because they signify who one prefers in their bed, he goes on to make a really profound statement about power relations within the juridical system and the way that identity both works within and places some outside of freedom or power. I love that he claims that “labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler, clout” (51). Here, is an excellent example of the power relations within different spheres of society as they are created by the presence of different socially constructed notions of identity. It is also an excellent example of the constructed and somewhat mythologized”homosexual”
Roy’s refusal to identify as a homosexual is a powerful moment, and at first, he seems to have a great deal of agency and control in his life, but then it is apparent that this scene is also a moment of incredible weakness and fear to acknowledge who he is and break from the system that defines him. His character is so unsympathetic at times, but in moments like this I felt a great deal for Roy, realizing that he is within a system that will not allow any expression of self outside of the socially constructed notions of truth and identity that he despises.
Tags: Agency, Angels in America, Confession, Foucault, Identity, Kushner, Power-Relations
