AIDS, Nonhuman Animal Imagery and Extinction in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America

Abstract

This article analyzes the rhetorical significance of nonhuman animal Otherness in Tony Kushner’s landmark two-part play Angels in America, which premiered in 1991 and 1992, respectively, and ambitiously explored (national) identity politics through the depiction of the AIDS crisis during the Reagan administration. Nonhuman animals appear in the text in multiple instances, articulating a rhetorical space of interspecies encounters at the center of which stands humans’ assimilation of time and the bodily experience. This study examines such spaces and imagery in order to, on the one hand, describe Kushner’s creative approach to nonhuman animals in the play and, on the other, shed some light on the exegetical possibilities that a serious consideration of nonhuman Otherness might entail. Drawing on animal studies scholarship, emphasis is placed on the ethical and historical significance that other species had in the AIDS epidemic and in the context of postmodernity—a role that has been largely overlooked by critics of the play. Although Kushner’s anthropocentric scope is undeniable, the AIDS crisis prompts discussions on interspecies encounters that implicate nonhuman animals at a scientific, cultural and ethical level. By re-historicizing nonhuman animals as agents and victims of (human) disease, we may better reassert their position as subjects worthy of moral consideration and explore how the rhetoric of illness can broaden its scope to include other species’ subjectivities and experience.