Theories
To be honest, I share Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov’s worries. Kushner encapsulates our collective obsession over finding a new political paradigm, and does it quite well in Angels in America. Aleksii adulates the tradition of his time and bemoans American Capitalism. (His fight with the American Cheeseburger as an image of an obsolete praxis hits close to home.) He waits for a new groundbreaking text, some singular fantastic writing that organizes the complicated worldview into a consumable and integrable idea. Kushner challenges a strict adherence to theory by transvaluing the most important aspects of political, sexual and religious thoughts. What results is a novel experience that matches the fervor of it’s time by theorizing only love and compassion as universal dictums for the observer.
As America’s religious theory, Mormonism involves Calvinist-like observances. Notably, Kushner refrains from rejecting them outright. He merely intends to question its foundation. Why else would he have Prior engage in hilariously erotic sex scenes with an angel with eight vaginas? Kushner provides relief and terror in one fell swoop. By including Prior’s sexual experiences and the revelations provided to him by the Angels, Kushner explores the possibility of religion sanctioning sexuality. The presentation of this proto-theory to religious sexuality is ad-hoc. Prior receives his understanding of Plasma Orgasmata as he has his huge orgasm. And as he explains it to Belize, note that there isn’t a sense of dogmatism or exclusion in the Angels’ work. Only bureaucratic creativity.
Kushner’s lesson throughout Angels in America is not “There are no rules”. Had that been the case, Kushner would have paid homage to Nietzsche by having Louis and Joe living happily in bliss as Prior endured his pain and hallucination alone. He could have possibly involved some racially tinged stabbing incident, where Belize destroys Roy Cohn for everything he’s got. But I digress. Each character, Joe included, is moulded throughout the play to become compassionate towards one another. Their collective interactions come out of general understandings of previously established theories. Finding their intersection in the prospect of facing the world with HIV/AIDS, the 1990s, Kushner intends that the characters move toward the future as Prior did in the throes of passion with Regina Vagina. He had an idea that something was up, but he didn’t have time to hammer out the details, exactly. (I know that’s not her name, but I enjoy calling her that.)
The call for compassionate experience alongside theory–that shouldn’t be deposed completely– resonates with me. I find myself grasping in the dark for an idea, a manual of sorts that can dictate and explain how exactly I should proceed to master the books I’ve yet to read, to adequately write my papers on a respectable level and to articulate my meager ideas in a world that seemingly begs for perfection. After reading Angels in America, I realize that the only way for me to know is to act first. But who says I can’t look before I leap?
Tags: Angels in America
July 8th, 2013 at 8:36 pm
Hi Kwame,
I want to underscore the importance of theorizing as a practice that includes compassion. There is a history of such a view in the west, with the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers who held empathy to be crucial to morality. Jefferson took this up too, so we can also see where shortcomings appear, given how empathy is culturally shaped by, in his case, racist assumptions that held to a hierarchy based on assumptions about race differences. More recently, the role of affect and emotions have been seen as vital to theory, and what you’ve said here about Kushner’s concluding passages may be seen an articulation of the value of compassion.
January 18th, 2014 at 1:38 pm
Dear Lee,
Thank you for assisting me in intersecting the value of compassion in the personal as well as the political. I would love to meet with you soon to discuss my progress in understanding the union thus far. Please advise me on your earliest convenience.
KO