A Thesis Against Individualism: Interaction with the Other in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America

• Thesis title in Czech: Teze proti Individualismu: Interakce s Druhým v Kushnerově Andělích v Americe
• Thesis title in English: A Thesis Against Individualism: Interaction with the Other in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America
• Key words: Individualismus|Druhý|zodpovědnost|Brechtovské divadlo|Lévinas|přízraky|Reagan|socialismus|Tony Kushner|Andělé|společnost|příznaky|interakce|láska|divadlo|alienace|změna|vývoj
• English key words: individualism|the other|responsibility|Brechtian theatre|Levinas|Reagan|socialism|Tony Kushner|Angels|society|interaction|love|theatre|alienation|change|progress
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2020/2021
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: doc. Clare Wallace, M.A., Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 20.10.2020
• Date of assignment: 21.10.2020
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 29.10.2020
• Date and time of defence: 07.09.2021 09:30
• Date of electronic submission: 16.08.2021
• Date of proceeded defence: 07.09.2021
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: PhDr. Hana Ulmanová, Ph.D.

Guidelines

In the Angels’ final postscript “With a Little Help from My Friends”, Tony Kushner acknowledges the collective nature of his work and the many collaborators who inspired him to engage in the writing of the play. He writes: “Together we organize the world for ourselves, or at least we organize our understanding of it; we reflect it, refract it, criticize it, grieve over its savagery and help each other to discern, amidst the gathering dark, paths of resistance, pockets of peace and places whence hope may be plausibly expected. Marx was right: The smallest indivisible human unit is two people, not one; one is a fiction.” This is important for Angels in America as well as their author: the characters interact with each other, with other worlds and the audience to find meaning in the world of the 1990s, an era which seems to overlook them with Reagan ignoring the internal country politics and focusing on foreign policies instead. In their histories and interactions (and throughout his epilogues), Kushner presents an argument against individualism, and thus against capitalism, which would be explored more in the introductory critical chapter. In my thesis, I would like to explore these interactions on three levels, starting with what Bloom alludes to as “the spirit world:” in a Hegelian light, the characters learn about themselves through “the Other,” in their imaginations, hallucinations and dreams. The reality is complemented by the spirit world (which is most externalized by the Angel and Heaven itself, which I would like to connect to Walter Benjamin’s “angel of history”), together they function as collaborators, create and reflect the characters and their pivotal conflicts: for example, Harper only finds the truth about Joe in the dream-like hallucination where she meets Prior; in their interaction, he is similarly confronted with the foreshadowing of his destiny as a prophet. In the next chapter, I would like to concentrate on the interaction between the individuals of the play (i.e. how they approach “the Other”) and on their differing attitudes towards individualism, focusing on the stark contrasts between the characters of Louis and Roy and on how they can be interpreted from the point of view of Emmanuel Lévinas and his ethics. The penultimate chapter will be concerned with the multiple interactions with the actual audience and the both personal and social (as manifested in the etymology of the Hebrew word for it) responsibility the play imposes on them through various techniques of epic theatre. This will be shown with a brief analysis of some scenes from the three productions I have seen: the 2003 HBO series, the 2017 National Theatre Live adaptation and the 2019 Czech production done by the ABC Theatre. What I would like to reach in the concluding chapter is that the play proposes an argument about favouring the human collectivity rather than the capitalism-supporting individualism through its multiple interactions with “the Other.” I see this as an ambitious project, connecting philosophy, critical theory and the theory of theatre, but am persuaded that this can connect the various works of scholarship that have been done on Angels and add to it, highlighting what many find the most significant about the play: its complexity and its ability to change the world and people who interact with it.

References

Bettina, Bergo. "Emmanuel Levinas." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2019 Edition). Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Accessed October 10, 2020.https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/levinas/.
Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Tony Kushner. Ed. by Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005.
Butler, Isaac and Kois, Dan. The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2018.
Kushner, Tony. Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Parts One and Two. London: Nick Hern Books, 2017.
Kushner, Tony. Tony Kushner in Conversation. Ed. by Robert Vorlicky. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1998.
National Theatre Live Talks. “Andrew Garfield and Denise Gough on Angels in America.” Interview chaired by Kate Bassett. NT Talks, 3 July 2017. Audio.https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/andrew-garfield-and-denise-gough-angels-in-america.
Ridout, Nicholas. Theatre and Ethics. Hampshire: Palgrave and Macmillian, 2009.
Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. London: Penguin Books, 2002.