Becoming Cyborg in Angels in America: Queering Donna Haraway’s ‘A Manifesto for Cyborg’

Angels in America ‘s focal point, a play by Tony Kushner, deals with multiple issues of race, gender, sexuality, AIDS, and so forth ignored by the dominant culture of the last decades of twentieth century, more specifically the ۱۹۸۰s. In line with Kushner’s subversive play, Donna Haraway’s ‘A Manifesto for Cyborg’ with the groundbreaking cyborg metaphor, not only renders the possibility for a transformation in the discourse of feminism, but it can also overlap with aims of queer theory. Additionally, Kushner brings into play the so-called outcasts of society and marginalized subjects, specifically queers, as the play’s major characters standing against the heteronormativity of the homophobic Reaganian era. Similarly, Haraway’s cyborg critique and queer theory allocate minority groups ways of survival in a phalloheterocentric society. By not laying their identities on monolithic categories, cyborg and queers seek a fluid and hybrid ontology. Henceforth, this paper sheds lights on the ostensible role of cyborg metaphor for struggling homophobia; furthermore, by analyzing Kushner’s style as a work of magic realism conveying camp sensibility, this paper connects Kushner’s style of writing to that of haraway’s cyborg writing to appropriate normative assumptions.

کلیدواژه ها:

‘A Manifesto for Cyborg’ ، Angels in America ، Donna Haraway ، cyborg writing ، queer theory