Ghent University
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Responsible AIDS and Becoming Human:
Exposing Identity in Angels in America and The Line of Beauty
Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Supervisor: ―Master in de Taal-en Letterkunde: Engels‖ Prof. Dr. Gert Buelens By Matthias De Poorter
August 2010
Ghent University
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Responsible AIDS and Becoming Human:
Exposing Identity in Angels in America and The Line of Beauty
Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Supervisor: ―Master in de Taal-en Letterkunde: Engels‖ Prof. Dr. Gert Buelens By Matthias De Poorter
August 2010 Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction ...... 1
2. AIDS/HIV ...... 4
HIV is not AIDS, AIDS is not a disease, HIV and AIDS do not equal death ...... 5
AIDS is not a synonym for the eighties ...... 8
AIDS cannot be AIDS, AIDS is always already a metaphor in discourse ...... 12
AIDS is not the result of moral decrepitude, sin, or divine retribution, nor does AIDS instil
innocence or guilt ...... 15
AIDS is not a gay disease. AIDS is not a black disease...... 18
3. Humanity/Identity ...... 21
Human/Inhuman or Intelligible/Unintelligible ...... 21
Self/Other ...... 27
Performative Identity ...... 29
AIDS/HIV ...... 33
4. Angels in America ...... 38
AIDS ...... 38
PWAs ...... 47
5. The Line of Beauty ...... 58
AIDS ...... 58
PWAs ...... 69
6. Conclusion ...... 77 Bibliography ...... 81
Primary Sources ...... 81
Secondary Sources ...... 81
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my supervisor, Professor Dr. Gert Buelens, and my two readers, Dr. Alise
Jameson and Dr. Johanna Wagner, for their patience, which I must have tried more than once this past year. A special thanks, also, to Dr. Johanna Wagner, for helping me through a
‗performative crisis.‘
With an enormous sense of gratitude, I would like to thank the library of English Literature, whose staff was always extremely helpful, especially since the books I needed were almost always located at the other side of the library.
For her continued support and insatiable zeal, I am severely indebted to my fellow student,
Annelies Colpaert, without whom this dissertation would not have existed.
I would also like to thank, from the bottom of my heart, Professor Dr. Kate Macdonald for a wonderful year, enriched by her presence. Although she might not know it, her frankness gave me the vigour to muddle on.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the lives of all people living with AIDS/HIV, past, present, and (alas) future. Their lives are infinitely more valuable than the following text.
De Poorter 1
1. Introduction
AIDS disrupts lives. People with AIDS lose any claim, if they ever had any, to the future. AIDS equals death. These ideas have been accepted far and wide since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the eighties, and are still commonly acknowledged in the 21st century. The disruption that is AIDS, however, is not the result of an impoverished health or a resignation to die in the person living with AIDS, rather it is produced by a society that decides to differentiate between human lives, those worthy of living and those whose death is tragic but not of any consequence. It is produced by a society which distinctively says ―AIDS is the problem of others‖ (Crimp 2002: 260). It seems redundant in the ‗enlightened‘ 21st century to stipulate that AIDS and HIV are not issues solely afflicting others, and yet the prejudices about AIDS that were created in the early eighties are as prevalent now as they were back then, even if some of those original prejudices disappeared in order to resurface in a different form. One needs but to look at the requirements of blood donation in many
Western countries to notice supposedly outdated prejudices against people living with AIDS, or at the stigmatisation process connected with AIDS which still prevents people from getting tested.
AIDS, not surprisingly, does not have the power to disrupt lives, as long as the person living with AIDS does not allow it do so. It does have the potential, however, to disrupt the worldview and opinions of the person living with AIDS. Moreover, the tenacity of the prejudices connected with AIDS urged people with AIDS and scholars to contemplate the nature of society and identity, and how these two notions were interconnected. Literature, however, also explores the ability of AIDS experience to disrupt and influence society and identity. In People in Trouble, for example, AIDS is represented as a transformative process, De Poorter 2 affecting not only people living with AIDS, but also their closest friends. It is precisely through AIDS that Kate experiences a change in her identity as an artist; AIDS exposes the futility of her political art and urges her to consider activist art instead. Like her activist work
(―burning installations‖), Kate feels as if she herself is ―burning‖ (Schulman 225, 217). This dissertation also attributes the potential to disrupt to AIDS, but in its appropriation of disruption, reinterprets it in terms of exposing the performative construction of identity. The focus of this essay lies not on the effect of AIDS as disruption of identity, but on the process of AIDS in disrupting and exposing identity. Angels in America and The Line of Beauty both utilise AIDS to deconstruct supposedly fixed identities and expose the creation of those identities.
I will analyse the stigmatisation process in the chapter ―AIDS/HIV‖, whilst the theory surrounding identity and AIDS is dealt with in the chapter ―Humanity/Identity.‖ The following two chapters, ―Angels in America‖ and ―The Line of Beauty‖ are each subdivided into two parts: ―AIDS‖ and ―PWAs‖, respectively looking at how AIDS functions in the work
(by means of the first chapter) and how identity is disrupted and exposed by AIDS (using the second chapter as a guidance). I chose Angels in America and The Line of Beauty because they both look back on AIDS and people living with AIDS during the eighties from a moment after the climax of the ―AIDS crisis.‖ Despite this similarity, the two literary works are distinctively different. Angels in America, part one performed in 1991 and part two in 1992, looks back on Reaganite America, but is still entrenched in the political activism of AIDS activist groups like ACT UP New York and in the sense of community during the AIDS epidemic. The Line of Beauty, published in 2004, depicts Thatcherite Britain but disregards the sense of community amongst people living with AIDS during the eighties. Regardless of De Poorter 3 these differences, AIDS is still able to expose identity construction, although the result of those exposures are decisively influenced by the different representations of AIDS.
De Poorter 4
2. AIDS/HIV
Almost thirty years after the discovery of the opportunistic infection, Pneumocystis
Pneumonia, in previously healthy ―active homosexuals,‖ AIDS (Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome), ARC (AIDS Related Complex), and HIV (Human Immunodeficiency
Virus), are firmly established in history, medical science, and the public mind.1 The thirty years of activism since then, however, has had depressingly little impact on the prejudices accompanying AIDS and HIV. Whether or not a population is informed by the specific ways of transmission of HIV, PWAs (Persons/People with AIDS) are still stigmatized by their surroundings, because of the ―fear of contagion‖ and ―negative, values-based assumptions about people living with HIV [and/or AIDS]‖ (UNAIDS 2008 Report 78). The assumptions about PWA are manifold and often contradictory, a person with AIDS, for instance, must be gay, must be a prostitute, must be promiscuous, must be an IV (intravenous) drug user, must be black, . . . and the list goes on and keeps growing. These prejudices depend on a system to exclude the PWA from the ―general population‖ (Treichler 64). AIDS/HIV itself cannot escape a similar set of values, created to reassure the fear of contagion in the general population. AIDS thus becomes a gay disease, originating in Africa, or in the case of
European countries, ―born . . . in the USA‖, in other words, an external disease (Gilman 101).
Unsurprisingly, the diagnosis of HIV or AIDS is still feared and kept secret.
The following issues are only a few problems in the experience of AIDS/HIV, but all of them are significant in understanding AIDS in the literary works discussed later on. These three literary works try to undermine popular assumptions about PWAs or try to depict PWAs humanely, yet sometimes they (inadvertently) subscribe to those prejudices and worsen intolerance rather than expose it. It comes as no surprise that Angels in America, written
1 Published in the American Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, June 5, 1981, Vol. 30, No. 21. De Poorter 5 during the latter part of the eighties but published in the early nineties, has a much deeper commitment than The Line of Beauty to exposing the stigma surrounding AIDS/HIV. Rooted in the AIDS activism of the late eighties, this play tries to keep alive the activism that constituted its origin. The Line of Beauty, on the other hand, looks back on the eighties from the 21st century, and values the experience of AIDS differently.
HIV is not AIDS, AIDS is not a disease, HIV and AIDS do not equal death
Cindy Patton argues in Inventing AIDS that HIV and AIDS are ―not synonymous‖, but two distinct concepts that might have a relation to each other, but not necessarily a causal relation (141, original italics). HIV and AIDS, Patton adds, are terms embedded in two different medicinal ―subdisciplines‖, respectively virology and immunology, even though they are influenced by each other (59). Virology stresses with the term HIV that the resulting illness is caused by a single virus, in this case a retrovirus, whereas immunology does not research why immunodeficiency is caused, but how it progresses, and what the result may be.
The two notions, then, represent the ―multiple and contradictory logics modelled variously on virology and immunology‖ (Patton 59). When HIV and AIDS are conflated, AIDS takes on a virological characteristic and the term ―AIDS virus‖ is created (Grover 21). Grover stresses that the use of this popular term ―equates infection with death‖ (21), but this conflation also attributes communicability to something that is not a disease, but a status. The similarity to the terms ‗flu virus‘ or ‗poliovirus‘ is not coincidental, and it turns the syndrome AIDS into the ―disease‖ AIDS (Grover 19). As a result, the visible symptoms of AIDS, which are actually the symptoms of opportunistic infections, support, precisely because of their visibility, the popular notion that AIDS is highly contagious. On the other hand, it would also reinforce the notion that if there are no visible signs of illness, one cannot be ill, infectious, or contagious. The ―AIDS virus‖ not only ―kills‖ people who are still perfectly healthy (or as De Poorter 6
Cindy Patton argues, it supports the view that ―‗testing positive‘ on the HIV antibody test . . . means you will soon ‗die of AIDS‘‖ [141]), it also creates the risk of unintentionally (and unwittingly) transmitting HIV.
Since ―AIDS virus‖ creates an immediate and causal link between the ―responsible‖ virus and the ―disease‖ AIDS, it erases the latency stage in between infection and viral activity. This also means that anyone who does not have the culturally specific symptoms of
AIDS, people who have ARC for instance, are not recognized to be ill.2 Practically, this may result in barring these people from drug trials, insurance, or AIDS discrimination laws. But it also ignores the presence of seropositive people, who do not have any opportunistic infections, eliminating the possibility of seropositive people without AIDS or ARC. This way of thinking enforces the binarism: either you have the ―AIDS virus‖ and you have AIDS, or you do not have the virus and you do not have the disease. As a result, being ―infected-but- healthy‖ becomes impossible, even though ―the body ‗harbors‘ many infections‖ (Sontag
118). A less extreme version of Grover‘s and Patton‘s view of equating infection with death, it still vehemently equates infection with disease. In other words, the HIV positive person can never be perfectly healthy,3 but is always in some state of disease, even before opportunistic infections occur.4
2 ―In the US, a severe immune deficiency results in a fairly invariable set of symptoms—in this case diseases as symptoms: PCP, KS, severe cytomegalovirus and herpes infections, and so on. In poor, tropical countries, the frequency of particular infections is different. In Central Africa, for example, tuberculosis and toxoplasmosis are more common than they are in the US.‖ (Grover 19, original italics). AIDS is more than just a disease, it is a syndrome, ―a pattern of symptoms pointing to a ‗morbid state‘‖ (ibid.). This syndrome, moreover, is socially constructed, as its presence is indicated by a certain set of opportunistic infections, which differ from region to region. Cindy Patton convincingly argues in the chapter ―Inventing ‗African AIDS‘‖ that the AIDS epidemic in African countries is not only the result of ―underfunded [medical] systems‖ but also of the substitution of the western-defined ―AIDS‖ for the local concept of ―slim disease‖ (79). The diagnosis of ―slim disease,‖ perceived as ―quaint‖ by western medicine, was considered less scientific and less objective (ibid.). 3 The question ―What is healthy?‖ remains. Are physical symptoms necessary to distinguish between healthy and ill? Is the mere presence of a ―foreign entity‖ in the body reason enough to be ill? Is an imbalance in the immune system a symptom of disease? All of these notions of health are inscribed in certain scientific and popular discourses, and cannot be seen apart from those terrains. Suffice it here to say that ―healthy‖ in this context means able to perform and survive in society. I am indebted to Cindy Patton‘s discussion of ―disease‖ in a De Poorter 7
The term ―AIDS virus‖ ultimately leads to the conclusion that AIDS must be a disease, rather than a syndrome. The symptoms of the opportunistic infections are transformed into symptoms of AIDS itself, and consequentially the infectious nature of opportunistic infections like PCP or KS (albeit a non-existent threat of infection for people with a functioning immune system) becomes characteristic of AIDS itself (Grover 19-20). AIDS, however, is not a disease but a syndrome, the state of a lowered immune system. The diseases that ―invade‖ the body because of this immunodeficiency are the indicators of the syndrome, not the syndrome itself. Hence, AIDS is not a disease in that once cannot ―acquire . . . or transmit it‖ (Patton
82).
Nor does AIDS conform to the ―rules‖ of disease. Once a disease has been beaten, and its symptoms (like fatigue, coughing, sneezing, and so forth) have disappeared, the formerly ill person is no longer troubled by those factors. AIDS is at this moment still incurable, a reality often forgotten in contemporary society, but the PWA can have remissions and at intervals have none of the AIDS-related symptoms. AIDS is typified by ―repetitions,‖ symptoms may (re)emerge on a daily basis (Patton, 55). An opportunistic infection may be cured, but there is no reassurance that the disease cannot return. In typifying AIDS as a disease, healthy intervals during the ―AIDS-stage‖ are ignored and the PWA is continuously perceived as about to die.5 Even though this is also true for many other long-term diseases
(like cancer), the unique position of AIDS as a state which permits other diseases to infect the body, rather than as a disease itself, sets it apart. The episodes in between active infections, short though they may be, are all in all infection- and disease-free periods. virological and immunological context, as well as her discussion of health in a seropositive status to make me consider this question. (pp. 58-64 and 150, note 20) 4 This ties in with the notion that people with a high ―risk‖ of getting AIDS/HIV are always in some manner already pathologised. See Kruger‘s discussion on how ―the gay man, the IV-drug user, ―high-risk‖ communities show their true—―unbalanced,‖ ―perverse‖—colors in being unable to separate themselves from the pathogenic‖ (1996: 40). 5 Note in this context the common depiction of PWAs in popular press as extremely ill and ―resigned‖ to die, and the demand by activists to depict PWAs as people enjoying and living their lives. (Crimp 2002: 86) De Poorter 8
Although the consequences of equating AIDS with HIV, or with a disease instead of a syndrome are dire, the most devastating assumption about AIDS/HIV is that it always ends with death. Depicting AIDS as the terminal and last phase of HIV is one of the most visible contributing factors to this. This does not mean that death is not a harsh reality for many people with HIV or AIDS, but that people with HIV or AIDS are still alive. The dominant premise that HIV results in AIDS, and AIDS always ends in death is fundamentally ungrounded. There is no proof that every HIV case evolves to AIDS, even though the causal relationship between AIDS and HIV is well-established.6 As Cindy Patton demonstrates:
―HIV . . . apparently requires some set of co-factors to produce its various chronic or fatal sequelae‖ (64, original italics). Due to recent Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) in western countries, moreover, ―non-AIDS malignancies loom particularly large among . . .
HIV-related morbidities‖ (Palella et al. 34). The substitution of an AIDS-related cause of death with a non-AIDS related cause, however, does not change this destructive attitude. The
PWA is like any other person with a chronic disease, at times ill but still very much alive.
AIDS is not a synonym for the eighties
A major occupation of the popular AIDS science during the eighties (and after) was the search for the source of HIV, primarily in non-western countries. The attempt to trace
AIDS/HIV back to Africa, or any other non-western country for that matter, is more than the simple wish to locate AIDS/HIV as ―foreign‖ to western hegemonic society, and hence not the result of that society (Sontag 137).7 Patton suggests that ―African AIDS‖ constructs AIDS as ―old‖ and ―naturalized,‖ ―reinforcing the view that [western] science solves the problems
6 In fact, this causality is so firmly rooted in science that any other explanation of AIDS is refuted. I do not wish to argue that HIV is not the causal agent of AIDS, but that ―a full acceptance of HIV as the cause of AIDS limits research options‖ and undermines scientific objectivity by foreclosing other possibilities. (Crimp 1996: 238) 7 The same can be said about the belief that AIDS has an American, African, or European origin. For an excellent discussion on the concept of AIDS as foreign, see ―The Narratives of AIDS‖ in Kruger 1996 (especially pp. 73-81) and Gilman‘s ―AIDS and Syphilis.‖ De Poorter 9 thrown up by nature‖ (69). The trope of ―patient Zero‖ has the same rationale, first of all it personifies AIDS as a ―sexually veracious, murderously irresponsible‖ man infecting unsuspecting (but never innocent) gay men (Crimp 1996: 244). Secondly, the problem AIDS is a result from an infection somewhere else and ―patient Zero‖ introduces it in (white) society. Lastly, the AIDS epidemic must have been present and prevalent in another part of the world, and is thus ―often identified with foreignness‖ (Kruger 1996: 80). Even though both tropes, which likewise dominate AIDS narratives (see ―The Narratives of AIDS‖ in
Kruger 1996), try to sever the association between AIDS and the ―here and now,‖ they simply try to place the blame somewhere else. The association between AIDS and the eighties, in present times, does exactly the same.
The AIDS epidemic was not only active during the eighties, but began before the official discovery of AIDS-related PCP (Pneumocistic carinii pneumonia) in 1981 and is still active today. In order for PCP to be discovered in those five men during the early eighties, these men had to have been exposed to HIV in the seventies. This ties in with the phenomenon of ―junky pneumonia‖ in the late seventies (Patton 27). Naturally, other opportunistic infections may have passed as unexplainable diseases or have been misdiagnosed. AIDS, as its initial name GRID (Gay-Related Immunodeficiency) shows, was discovered precisely because those first five PWAs ―shared a demographic trait [i.e. homosexuality]‖ (Patton 27). Scientific research established that a common factor lies at the basis of those various diseases, and that this factor is present in the gay lifestyle of these men.
Limiting AIDS to the eighties not only disregards AIDS and PWAs in the previous and subsequent ages, but also reinvests in the belief that AIDS is a gay disease.
De Poorter 10
Although HIV might have been present in the human population before its official discovery in 1981, and AIDS/HIV is still commonplace in present-day society, AIDS did play an important role during the eighties (and afterwards). AIDS should not be disconnected from this decade, instead the equation between both concepts should be overturned, since it invokes the problematic mentality that ―AIDS is not my problem.‖ (Crimp 2002: 259) In associating
AIDS (solely) with the eighties, HIV and AIDS are posited as a historical problem, or at least as a foreign problem. AIDS becomes a strange entity that is no longer of major influence in contemporary society, and is not even considered to be active in one‘s own society, despite contradictory statistics. HIV and/or AIDS do not lose their power to ―scare,‖ nor is AIDS/HIV education thwarted, they are just forgotten as being present in society. Paradoxically, then, the decrease of HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths in the immediate personal sphere, precisely due to safe sexual practices, resulted in a general disavowal of being at risk.
When the presence of AIDS/HIV is ignored in the present, and associated with the past,
AIDS is relegated AIDS to just one more ―item on a long list of supposedly intractable social problems,‖ like poverty and criminality (Crimp 2002: 175). Slowly but surely, the AIDS epidemic lost its ―emergency‖ and became a ―permanent disaster‖ (ibid.).8 A disaster, however, which society tries to ignore in order to escape the paralysing sense of fear inherent in epidemics. The absence of the diseased ―AIDS victim‖ reinforces the perception of
AIDS/HIV as a conquered disease, which no longer needs to be taken in account. In those rare instances in which AIDS/HIV is dealt with, it is treated as a ―chronic illness,‖ with which one
8 Patton, however, points out the dangers of calling the AIDS crisis an emergency, a disaster, or an epidemic, since invoking these concepts ―creates the conditions of blame and quarantine‖, but also creates ―a system of control‖ and panic (108). Although I do agree with her warning, I hesitate to endorse it completely, since these terms also invoke the magnitude of the AIDS crisis. Hence, I will continue to use these terms but with a sense of apprehension. De Poorter 11 can live for an indefinite amount of time, provided with the right care.9 On the other hand,
AIDS/HIV is always accompanied with a mortality statistics, and is thus reinvested with the image of death, or rather a slow, but inescapable death. Despite the AIDS activism of the eighties, AIDS/HIV is still closely associated with death, but unlike the eighties, AIDS/HIV- related death, in western countries, is a death that is far away, yet inescapable.10
Equating AIDS with the eighties also involves a mixture of attitudes, so what is true for the eighties is not true for the 21st century. An AIDS-related death in the eighties, for example, was believed to be fast, whereas nowadays, as mentioned above, death is a slow- acting process (at least with the aid of western medicine). The experience of the AIDS crisis, due to the dominant discourse of ―risk groups,‖ was a collective experience in the eighties.
Even though the mere possibility of having AIDS might have ostracised the PWA from the
―general population,‖ he or she could turn to a rich network of community support groups, whether these were independently created or deeply based in pre-existing communities.11 In the face of brutal intolerance and AIDS-phobia, these PWAs (but certainly not all, and most definitely not all by choice) were united in and supported by communities. The slow familiarisation of AIDS during the nineties and 21st century and in some respect the ―de- communalising‖ of AIDS and HIV, however, caused the disappearance of these high-profile activist groups, like ACT UP New York. Douglas Crimp intimates this sense of loss in his
9 Needless to say that this blatantly disregards ―the glaring inequity whereby the lucky few can afford to buy their health while the unlucky many die of AIDS‖ (Crimp 2002: 2). One can argue that seropositivity is always a ―chronic disease,‖ due to the latency stage in between infection and the onset of AIDS. Yet seropositivity is often only discovered with the first symptoms of opportunistic infections in countries where testing is not always available or practised. I do not wish to conflate HIV with AIDS, but to stress that ―seroconversion‖ does not happen at the time of infection, but when one discovers one is seropositive. This may be early on or never at all. On the obscuring effect of medical terminology on the processes of HIV and AIDS, see David Román, especially pp. 47-48. 10 This is not a proposal to do away with defining AIDS as a chronic and manageable syndrome, but to erase that persistent equation of AIDS with death, as mentioned above. 11 For an excellent, yet somewhat subjective, discussion of the differences between ―gay AIDS groups‖ and ―black AIDS groups,‖ see Cindy Patton‘s Inventing AIDS, especially ―The AIDS Service Industry: The Construction of ‗Victims,‘ ‗Volunteers,‘ and ‗Experts‘‖ and ―Inventing ‗African AIDS‘‖. De Poorter 12 discussion on Andrew Sullivan‘s 1996 article ―When Plagues End: Notes on the Twilight of an Epidemic‖. He admits:
―Learning that you‘re [sic] HIV-positive after the demise of AIDS activism and
the general sense of urgency about AIDS, even within the gay community in the
United States, could indeed make you feel that you‘d [sic] missed the party—if by
‗party‘ you mean a system of support and a sense of community based on general
agreement that the epidemic constitutes a crisis.‖ (Crimp 2002, 5)
AIDS cannot be AIDS, AIDS is always already a metaphor in discourse
The discussion about AIDS/HIV is always biased, since the discussion itself always has a goal or context which influences AIDS/HIV. Patton argues that all ―AIDS words . . are never simply ‗facts‘ or ‗truth‘ but take on particular meanings at particular times, and are understood differently by different people‖ (45). In the field of science, for example, Kruger proves that HIV infection takes on metaphors normally attributed to homosexuality and gender. Kruger first of all demonstrates that the use of linguistic metaphors in scientific studies (―the translation of DNA to protein,‖ for example [1996: 9]) attribute a conscious
―intention‖ to the biological process (10). HIV, however, as a retrovirus is ―perverse,‖ precisely because it reverses the ―‗normal‘ biological process‖ and inverts the ―normal flow of information,‖ that is from RNA to DNA (Kruger 1996: 15).12 The perverse intention of this specific virus echoes the belief that one can only get HIV by ―perverse‖ activities. Moreover, the virus itself resembles the image of the deviant PWA who defies norms set by society and who continues to infect other unsuspecting citizens (cells).
12 On the perversity of the cell as already ―queer‖, see ―AIDS is not gay. AIDS is gay‖. For a more in-depth analysis of this trope see the chapter ―The Battlefields of Masculinity‖ in Kruger‘s AIDS Narratives, especially pp. 33-42. De Poorter 13
Kruger adds that the invading virus is not just perverse but perversely masculine. The human cell‘s masculinity is opposed to the virus‘ masculinity ―in terms of male homosociality, with two differently ‗armed‘ male opponents battling for dominance [of the female cytoplasm]‖ (Kruger 1996: 37). The concept that AIDS is fundamentally a gay disease resonates in this depiction of HIV infection. Kruger continues by stressing that this alternative masculinity ―undermines, through a kind of homosexual rape, the gender hierarchy between
[the masculine] nucleus and [the feminine] cytoplasm‖ (1996: 39). The virus itself does what the gay man is able to do in society, that is destroy heteronormative hierarchy. The fact that the virus does not attack the cell as a whole but ―‗sneakily‘ insert[s] itself‖ into the masculine
DNA shows that the virus is not truly masculine, but some sort of perversion (Kruger 1996:
39). This language betrays the homophobia innate in many ―objective‖ scientific studies, as well as the fear of involuntary ―homosexual recruitment‖ (Kruger 1996: 39).
Another metaphor often used in AIDS language, and less restricted to scientific language, is the war against AIDS or fighting AIDS. The invading, foreign virus attacks the body but in such a way that it does not destroy it but opens it up for other threats that will kill the body. The body thus houses the enemy and has to fight itself in order to survive.
Regardless of the personal consequences of this metaphor, it is widespread and used in many different contexts, ranging from the scientific (―fighting the virus‖ [Kruger 1996: 38]) to the political (‗fighting the ―spread‖ of infection‘ [Kruger 1996: 73])13 and even into the personal
(‗the struggle with AIDS‘). Undoubtedly, this metaphor will have its advantages to raise political awareness, but as Sontag argues ―it powerfully contributes to the excommunicating and stigmatizing of the ill‖ (180). Carrying the so-called enemy and able to infect others,
13 AIDS in political discourses is not merely fought because of its spread. It also becomes a symbol for dissidence and anarchy, as it echoes rebellious behaviour like homosexuality, promiscuity, or IV drug use. ―It [AIDS] is indulgence, delinquency – addictions to chemicals that are illegal and to sex regarded as deviant‖ (Sontag 111). This discourse is abruptly reversed in AIDS activism, since it is the government which acts irresponsible with regards to the AIDS crisis. De Poorter 14
PWAs become suspicious in the mind of the ―general population‖ and are banned from positions of power (concerning AIDS). PWAs, Patton illustrates, ―are not supposed to become actively involved in treatment concerns and are considered highly biased.‖ (51)
The plague metaphor, lastly, dominates AIDS language and decisively influences the image of AIDS.14 Gilman in his article ―AIDS and Syphilis: The Iconography of Disease‖ demonstrates that AIDS, despite its fundamental differences, was (and is) inscribed into the plague discourse of syphilis. For instance, the image of the female prostitute as a vector infecting the population with HIV can, intuitively, not be associated with AIDS due to the relative difficulty of female to male infection, in fact the risk is always higher for the recipient. Yet, the female prostitute with AIDS is a recurring trope in AIDS narratives, for the sole reason that it is a standard ―icon‖ in the STD-related plague discourse (Gilman 98).
Susan Sontag also discusses the effects of the plague metaphor and argues that the invocation of the term ―plague‖ creates a sense of ―fear and . . . prejudice‖ (150). In other words,
―plague‖ permits the ―general population‖ to be scared of PWAs and to shun them, in a fashion reminiscent of the treatment of ―lepers.‖ ―Plague.‖ as a last blow, gives a sense of
―infectiousness‖ to AIDS as well, which undermines the fact that HIV is transmittable but not contagious.
These (and other) metaphors show that AIDS is never ―alone‖ in language, but always accompanied by a set of assumptions in which AIDS is a gay disease or a sneaky disease, that it should be fought, and so forth. Treichler supports this view and suggests that ―[w]e cannot .
. . look ‗through‘ language to determine what AIDS ‗really‘ is‖ (33). She goes on: ―AIDS is a story, or multiple stories, read to a surprising extent from a text that does not exist,‖ ―AIDS is
14 Other metaphors are of course also present in AIDS language, such as the metaphors of time, mutation, change, and so forth. For an interesting, yet not exhaustive, study into this matter, see Sontag‘s AIDS and its Metaphors. De Poorter 15 a nexus where multiple meanings, stories, and discourses intersect and overlap, reinforce and subvert one another‖ (42). AIDS is constructed in discourse in order to support a political agenda or a personal belief, but even if there is no clear intention, AIDS remains constructed in a language with a set of dogmas already in place: ―Any framework offered for understanding ‗the AIDS epidemic‘ is laden with historical references and assumptions which relate our lived experience to particular social institutions‖ (Patton 2).
AIDS is not the result of moral decrepitude, sin, or divine retribution, nor does
AIDS instil innocence or guilt
A dominant belief in AIDS logic is that AIDS creates ―innocent‖ and ―guilty victims,‖ in that the innocent victims are children (and perhaps the wives of bisexual men) and the guilty victims (gay, promiscuous, IV drug using) adults. This promotes the mentality that
MSM (Men who have Sex with Men) and IV drug users are in some way responsible for contracting HIV, unlike innocent victims who are perceived to be ―murdered.‖ A result of the
―risk group‖ logic, it sustains the notion that AIDS/HIV only infects those risk groups, and that it is the malignancy of the members of those risk groups who intentionally infect the
―general public‖ which is the cause of the AIDS/HIV spread.15 The ―guilty/innocent‖ binarism not only allows the ―general public‖ to ignore high risk communities as being responsible for their own problems, but at the same time condemn them for their risk behaviour and, more controversially, for their introduction of AIDS/HIV in the general public
(Treichler 64).16 This mindset reverberates abovementioned images of AIDS/HIV vectors intentionally infecting ―innocent‖ people. The ―guilty‖ PWA infects ―innocent victims‖
15 This, of course, rules out the possibility of infection by means of blood transfusion, but even in these cases the contaminated blood is perceived to be from high risk communities, and its mere presence in the blood stock is seen as ―negligence‖ on the part of high risk people, who do not care if the ―general public‖ remains ―safe.‖ 16 Sontag notes in this context that ―[a] polluting person is always wrong,‖ but also that a ―person judged to be wrong is regarded as, at least potentially, a source of pollution.‖ (Sontag 134). The PWA is thus always gay, but a gay person could always have AIDS. De Poorter 16 because (s)he knows that (s)he is ultimately responsible for her or his condition, it is their own
―fault‖ that they have this ―disease‖.17
It should come as no surprise, then, that this twofold is closely connected with the metaphor of the plague as a punishment for sin and moral decrepitude. Right-wing polemicists have often invoked AIDS as divine retribution for the moral sins of gay men, prostitutes and IV drug users.18 But the invocation does not end here, it also affects so-called
―heterosexual, African AIDS‖ because of the portrayal of AIDS as a disease of ―poverty‖, of the ―poor‖. (Patton 82; Sontag 137) The obvious result of this metaphor is that people who live according to western Christian values and in western countries are not at risk. This dangerous statement not only covers up the fact that HIV can affect anyone, but also increases the risk of HIV transmission, because of its so-called otherness.19 On the other hand, this metaphor also implies that sooner or later all immoral (read gay, promiscuous, or IV drug using) men and women will contract HIV and die, ―leaving the earth free from all sin.‖
Although this rhetoric prevailed during the eighties, it still enforces itself in modern times. People dying of AIDS-related diseases are still associated with Africa or South-
America, with non-western countries, and are almost always considered to be ―foreign‖ and
―others.‖ The belief that AIDS, on the other hand, is a form of divine retribution for immoral activity, has transformed itself over the last three decades, and the ―guilt‖ of PWAs is no longer the result of moral sin but of knowledge. The person living with HIV/AIDS in the 21st
17 I am indebted to Steven Kruger‘s analysis of the dualism of guilty and innocent victims in the chapter ―Gay and Other Subjects of AIDS‖ in AIDS Narratives. 18 Even if ―high risk‖ people practise safe sex, they are still considered ―morally derelict‖ (Patton 104). These ―high risk‖ people are not ―immoral‖ because there is a possibility that they have AIDS/HIV, but because of their behaviour. Whether they have AIDS or not is unimportant, at best it is merely the externalisation of their immorality. 19 Susan Sontag: ―That it is a punishment for deviant behavior and that it threatens the innocent – the two notion about AIDS are hardly in contradiction. Such is the extraordinary potency and efficacy of the plague metaphor: it allows a disease to be regarded both as something incurred by vulnerable ‗others‘ and as (potentially) everyone‘s disease.‖ (149-150) De Poorter 17 century is perceived as guilty precisely because he or she knew how HIV is transmitted.
Patton, whilst discussing AIDS education, argues that ―‗communities‘ are educated on the assumption that they have an obligation to know and protect the ‗public‘‖ (103). In other words, although the members of risk communities have a supposedly higher chance of getting
HIV, it is their responsibility to avoid the transfer of HIV from high risk communities to the general population.20 This modified form of reprimand is no longer the domain of the right- wing moralist, but has invaded the entire society, including the ―gay community.‖ Douglas
Crimp, in discussing a friend‘s reaction to his seropositive status, analyses this new form of reproof as a ―psychic defense‖ (2002: 300). ―If we tell ourselves that only irresponsible fools still expose themselves to HIV, we allow ourselves to imagine that we are safe,‖ he proffers, but then adds: ―[b]ut if even the educated, rational, and responsible among us can become infected with HIV. . . then we have to think differently‖ (2002: 300). Crimp advocates that
―failing‖ to protect oneself should not be judged, instead it should be considered human, even if the person is well-informed.
Crimp, here, exposes the real power of AIDS moralism, since dehumanising PWAs is one of the most active process in many AIDS discourses. HIV is often perceived as an ―alien‖ intruder (Kruger), the PWA is popularised as the ―Other‖ (Patton), the popular depiction of the PWA is almost always decisively inhuman (Crimp), these concepts conspire together with
AIDS moralism to undo the humanity of PWAs, and thus to distance AIDS/HIV from the
―human‖ population. Predictably, AIDS/HIV can only dehumanise those ―communitie‖‘ already prone to dehumanisation or otherness. The gay community, the black community, IV drug users, and prostitutes were all in some manner already dehumanised before the AIDS epidemic.
20 Cindy Patton continues this analysis and argues that the common opinion holds that in intercourse ―only the HIV antibody positive person is responsible for ensuring the practice of safe sex‖ (104). De Poorter 18
AIDS is not a gay disease. AIDS is not a black disease.21
The two strongest prejudices concerning AIDS/HIV are also the most resilient, i.e. that
AIDS is a ―gay disease‖ and a ―black disease.‖ The problem with these two equations is that it forecloses other possibilities such as AIDS being a ―straight disease.‖ That this was not even considered possible until proven otherwise (by the AIDS crisis in Africa and the much- published case of Magic Johnson contracting HIV) demonstrates the term ―heterosexual
AIDS,‖ since the fact that ―the ‗heterosexuality‘ of AIDS‖ had to be emphasised by the marker ―heterosexual‖ (Kruger 1996: 41). More strikingly, however, is the fact that a syndrome can adopt a sexuality or a race. Why then is AIDS attributed to first of all homosexuality? In the previous paragraphs, I have already indicated some of the possibilities: because of the ―pathologisation‖ of homosexuality, because of its perverse nature, because of its visibility as an AIDS-stricken ―community,‖ as Cindy Patton argues. All these explanations are necessary in order to understand the complex ―story‖ of AIDS.
Yet, one more reason has to be analysed: AIDS/HIV is gay, because it had to be gay.
Homosexuality in heteronormative society is defined by its relative otherness to ―normal‖ heterosexuality. Since the sexual transmission of HIV was greatly emphasised, in order to characterise it as a ―sexually transmitted disease,‖ that sexuality had to be defined (Gilman
90). All STDs are transmittable via ―heterosexual‖ acts and ―homosexual‖ acts (whatever those acts may be), and so is HIV. Yet, a specific sexual activity had to established as the cause of the disease, in order to protect the hegemonic sexual form. In the case of syphilis, as
Gilman argues, the main reason of infection was attributed to the sexually active woman, the
21 Note that gay is meant as gay and lesbian here. Despite the low rate of transmission in lesbian relationships, ―lesbians along with gay men have been identified in the popular imagination with the threat of AIDS‖ (Kruger 1996: 59). De Poorter 19
―seductress‖ (98).22 History, however, lent a different possibility to characterise HIV as distinctively other, not only because those five men were gay (or rather were identified as gay) but also due to the gay community‘s ―visibil[ity]‖ (Patton 27). The innate pathology of homosexuality is, therefore, externalised and the ―homosexual‖ is ostracised as the ―other.‖
The fact that AIDS/HIV is gay is consequently the logical conclusion of the belief that both gay men and lesbians and PWAs are the ―others‖ of normative, rule-abiding, straight men and women.
Designating AIDS as a ―black disease‖ works in a similar fashion. The fact that HIV is much more widespread in African countries does not mean that black men and women are more susceptible to HIV, or more often practise ―risk behaviours,‖ instead it is probably to be attributed to the shortage of ―cheap condoms‖ in non-western countries (Patton 86). When the main route of transmission in Africa was said to be heterosexual, accepted notions of African sexuality had to change drastically in order to protect the ―general population.‖23 Black people were ―homosexualised through their allegedly practice of anal sex‖ in order to conform to the already established notion of AIDS as gay (Patton 91). Consequentially, black people are triply ostracised as ―other,‖ first of all because they are black, secondly because they embody
AIDS, and thirdly because they perform sexual acts closely related to homosexuality.
Having said that, it would be wrong to disconnect AIDS from gay or black history entirely, since it is such a major part of their personal histories. Crimp intimates that the loss of close PWAs and the sheer magnitude of the epidemic are often so overwhelming that they
22 This attitude is still active in AIDS logic, as the trope of the prostitute as a ―source of pollution‖ shows (Gilman 107). Leo Bersani expands on this theory and notes that any ―female sexuality,‖ regardless of anatomical sex, is perceived as ―intrinsically diseased‖ and promiscuous female sexuality becomes a ―sign of infection‖ (211, original italics). 23 The very act of defining ‗African‘ sexualities in terms of western categories disregards the different ways by which sex is perceived in African communities, as Patton also argues in ―Inventing ‗African AIDS‘.‖ De Poorter 20 induce a ―tendency to disavowal‖ within the stricken ―community‖ (2002: 9). The denial of the presence of AIDS within these communities, and indeed within all communities, would not only sanction a hierarchy between the lives of people who died of an AIDS-related disease and those who did not, but it also prevents communities to mourn ―lost friends‖ (Crimp 2002:
138).
De Poorter 21
3. Humanity/Identity
What makes a subject? What differentiates between the ―I‖ and the ―not-I‖ (so often dismissively called the ―other‖)? How is identity formed? These questions are easier to ask than to answer, and any answer to or any interpretation of this issue is tenuous and fraught with personal preferences. In this chapter, I want to discuss some of the mechanisms I consider important in identity creation, in order to show how HIV and AIDS in the three literary works contribute to the destabilization of a uniform selfhood, and to expose those very same mechanisms.
Human/Inhuman or Intelligible/Unintelligible
In every normative society24, regardless of the parameters of this normativity, each
―inhabitant‖ is required to either adhere to the norms of the community or to disregard them and no longer be considered part of that community. The images put forward as the norms by this society are considered ―regulatory ideal[s]‖ (Butler 1993: 22).25 Regulatory ideals, in this manner, denote how society is constructed and perceived. The process of normativity does not only indicate how a person sees (or has to see) oneself, but also structures the surrounding
24 The phrase normative society is, of course, a tautology, since every society is normative, in that it accepts only certain individuals and behaviours. A (deceptively) straightforward example of this is criminality, since those people breaking the rules (or norms) of society are safely contained, away from the centre of society. This liminal space, however, is not just physical, it is also the result of a psychological process, as these criminals are no longer perceived as ‗human.‘ Consider, for example, the relative ease of calling murderers, child molesters, or rapists ‗monsters.‘ 25 Like discourse or power, regulatory ideals ―construct the subject,‖ or rather, the subject according to the hegemonic structure (Butler 1993: 9). It has, however, two advantages: it does not have agency and it does not purport to be achievable. The fact that a regulatory ideal has no agency echoes Butler‘s warning in Bodies that Matter that we should not see identity as an effect or a result of a single activity. Instead , the subject is a performative activity (Butler 1993: 9). By reiteration of a certain set of actions and ideologies, the subject comes into being (and is then obscured as the source of those very actions). See also ―Performative Identity‖ in this chapter. On the other hand, the name itself shows that the norm is an ideal, and hardly ever reached. ―[A]n ideal that no one can embody,‖ the normative image, like that of a masculine or feminine gender, is itself a copy of the ―real‖ (Butler 1990: 176, 187 [original italics]). Whether the ―real‖ can be imagined is the subject of a heated discussion. Suffice it here to say that even what is considered as ―natural‖ in the normative society is but the result of a normalising process. I adopt the term ―regulatory ideal‖ as introduced by Butler, yet its use as a neutral form to refer to the normative process is my own viewpoint. De Poorter 22 world. The refutation of these regulatory ideals and the resistance to the process of normativity is not just renouncing that structuring system, but also falling out of that system and out of that worldview. Essentially, it means that one becomes a non-person, although still perfectly thinkable in that structure as the opposite of normative: ―[T]here is no possibility . . . of reality outside of the discursive practices,‖ which regulate reality, hence the non-person is still very much within those discursive practices (Butler 1990: 189).26
The oppositional character of normativity implies that every single person either conforms entirely to these normative rules, or subverts them entirely. This overly simplistic logic does not allow for people to take on positions in between, but as Diana Fuss accurately points out: ―most of us are both inside and outside at the same time‖ (5). Furthermore, the act of subversion is not as easy as it is portrayed here, since ―consciousness itself may be dominated and, indeed, constituted by hegemonic ideology‖ (Tyler 54). To claim, then, that every person is in an either/or situation would reinvest in a structure of normative or non- normative. On the other hand, these binarisms are results of the normative structure and regardless of their efficacy, they do structure reality and subscribing to these twofolds signifies either acceptance or rejection of regulatory ideals.
In her seminal work Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick discusses the binarisms present in contemporary society. Although not all of these oppositions are the direct result of normative duality, they cannot be upheld without its omnipresence. In the opposition of natural versus unnatural, for example, natural is considered to be adhering to the norms of society and unnatural the repudiation of those same norms, even if the person refuting those
26 It is important to note that the rejection of the normative system can only take place after the acknowledgment of and incorporation into that system. Indeed, as Butler argues, the subject cannot exist outside of the normative system, as ―signification‖ is constructed by the ―regulated process of repetition‖ of regulatory ideals (1990: 185, original italics). De Poorter 23 norms believes (s)he is following her/his own nature.27 Judith Butler argues in this context that the ―heterosexual matrix‖ naturalises and normalises a certain set of ―bodies, genders, and desires,‖ whilst at the same time denaturalises those bodies, genders, and desires that deviate from the norm (1990: 194). The notion public/private, on the other hand, seems less attached to normative duality, and yet this too is dependent on adhering to norms, as the public is where one supposedly follows norms and rules, whereas the private is synonymous with the obscurity of norms. This does not mean, however, that the individual, personal space is a private place. ―[T]he difference between ‗public‘ and ‗private‘ could never be stably or intelligibly represented as a difference between two concrete classes of physical space‖
(Sedgwick 110). The truly private, then, is not defined as the space that has no contact with the public, with other people. Instead, it is the place where regulatory ideals are opposed. The very act of denying norms, then, creates the private space, as is also apparent in the image of
―the [homosexual] closet‖, a deeply private sphere (Sedgwick 56).
Normativity lies at the heart of two powerful oppositions: human versus inhuman and intelligible versus unintelligible. More than any other binarisms, these oppositions have the power to structure reality and the perception of reality,28 and as a result to influence the lives of people subjected to these binarisms. The first twofold, human and inhuman, is the most striking since the notion of humanness has been established as a fixed notion of biological characteristics. This, nonetheless, does not impede the process of dehumanising people who break regulatory ideals, as the stressed inhumanity of many criminals indicate. A person does not have to go as far as these criminals, however, to be the subject of a dehumanisation process. A PWA (or any other individual suffering from a disease which is similarly strongly
27 Sedgwick remarks upon this ambiguity, as she interprets ―natural depravity‖ as a ―depravity [that] is unnatural‖ and a ―depravity [that] is natural‖ (95). 28 Although both notions are represented separately, they do denote the same since reality itself does not exist outside of language. The unintelligible is, like the inhuman, still thinkable. The truly incomprehensible cannot be imagined. De Poorter 24 entrenched in normative discourses, like syphilis) is often depicted as a person who has already given up on life and is imagined as the exact opposite of the human ―picture.‖ Often lifeless, often alone, and often covered with ―alien‖ spots (the unmentioned and ignored
Kaposi‘s sarcoma), the PWA cannot be further away from the human.29
Butler argues in Undoing Gender that transsexuality and intersexuality are considered inhuman, precisely because they do not conform to regulatory ideals (―‗failing‘ in normality‖
2004: 82). Intersex people, for example, undergo at birth sex reassignment surgery in order to facilitate their ―passing‖ in society. The surgery to ―correct‖ a natural condition, however, ironically reveals the ―constructedness‖ of human, since it cannot be natural as the surgery changes nature in order to produce the person as human. The inhumanity of transsexual people, on the other hand, is exposed by the sex reassignment surgery, since the natural is changed into the unnatural. These two ―inhumanities‖ might seem the result of their ―un- natures,‖ but are in fact their cause, since unnatural is perceived to be that which is not normal in humans. Humanity and normalcy are produced within the matrix regulatory ideals, so everything that is not in function of those ideals, cannot be natural or human.
Homosexuality is in the same manner dehumanised by means of denaturalising its sexuality and its reduction to a specific sexual act. According to the abovementioned regulatory ideals, sexuality is only allowed in function of ―compulsory sexual reproduction‖
(Butler 1990: 141). Each sexuality that does not have reproduction as its end (goal) cannot be natural.30 Even more so, sex that does not have reproduction as its goal is considered to be
29 Illness, as the opposite of health, is indirectly related to inhumanity. The attribution of diseases to foreign entities, such as bacteria and viruses seems to support this belief. AIDS, however, as a weakened immune system, cannot as readily be seen as separate from the human. For a closer investigation of the disruptive power of AIDS in normative regulations, see ―AIDS/HIV‖ in this chapter. 30 Note in this context that in vitro fertilization would be perceived as natural, were it not for the absence of the penis and the vagina, two important loci for reproductive sexuality. De Poorter 25 pleasure-focused, instinct-driven, and animalistic. Not only sexuality is denaturalised but also the place where specific sexual acts supposedly take place, since homosexuality is often reduced to anal sex. This not only disregards any other sexual activity between two men, but also posits sex between two men as outside the two libidinal spaces on the body, which are the vagina and the penis. Butler points out that the ―compartmentalization‖ of the body into different libidinal loci is a ―reduction of erotogeneity‖ (1990: 146). The heterosexual regulatory ideal stresses that there are only two erogenous spaces on the body, the vagina and the penis; anal sex is not considered to be inscribed in those two spaces. In ―Is the Rectum a
Grave?‖, Leo Bersani considers the popular (during the AIDS crisis) statement that the rectum is a grave, which he sees as having the ―potential for death‖ of subjectivity (222). Bersani, however, ignores that the equation of anal sex with death erases any indication of the rectum‘s erogeneity. Hence, homosexuality cannot be any more human than necrophilia, even if in reality not all MSM participate in anal sex.
The distinction between intelligible and unintelligible likewise regulates reality. An extremely simplistic example is ―lesbian sex,‖ as the question ―What do lesbians do in bed?‖ indicates. Again this stresses that there are two necessary loci for ―normal‖ sex, the penis and the vagina, but also that a penetrative act is essential to constitute ―normal‖ sex. This ideology enforces a hierarchy on sexual relationships, in other words someone has to penetrate and someone has to be penetrated. Even more so, any form of sex that does not include this penetrative act is not perceived as a real sexual act. For example, oral or masturbatory sex is not constituted as decisive in the act of losing one‘s virginity. These practices are more often seen as ―foreplay‖ than actual intercourse (in the case of oral sex) or as autoerotic (in the case of masturbatory sex). Yet, as Sedgwick demonstrates, sexuality and sexual acts are De Poorter 26 constructed by more aspects than the object of desire.31 Not all of these forms of sex are seen as intelligible, precisely because they do not adhere to the conventions of ―normal‖ sex, which affect every single formative aspect of sex. Even if some form of sexuality adheres to the principles that structure the ―normal‖ object of desire, the ―normal‖ action, the ―normal‖ goal of sex, as soon as this form of sex includes a third person, not included in sexual activities, but clearly part of it, the possibility of comprehension is greatly diminished (if not obliterated).
Sexuality, however, is not the sole aspect of identification affected by dehumanisation.
Gender and the body, amongst other things, are as vulnerable to the human/inhuman distinction as sexuality. A person, for example, who self-identifies as male, but is anatomically considered to be female by normative society, will have a hard time explaining to his surroundings why he wants to self-identify as male, or indeed why he should still be treated as human. Indeed, the notion that anyone who has a vagina must be female or who has a penis must be male is so firmly rooted in normative mentality, that even a chromosomally different ―sex‖ cannot undermine this notion, as Butler demonstrates in her discussion of the master gene (1990: 135-141). Likewise, the body that does not conform to the regulatory ideal is often considered to be inhuman, and its humanity has to be accepted rather than presumed, a process many people with disabilities have to undergo. It is in this context that Butler argues to ―extend the norms that sustain viable life to previously disenfranchised communities‖
(2004: 225). The opposition human versus inhuman thus permeates the entire society and successfully creates two classes: the ―normal human‖ and the ―abnormal inhuman.‖
31 See for example her exhaustive list of ―individual differences‖ on pp. 25-26. De Poorter 27
Self/Other
Although the regulatory ideal is decisive in the construction of humanity and subsequent identity, the binarism self/other is equally vital for the perception of identity. Not surprisingly, then, this binarism is also utilised within the normative process to create a normal self and an abnormal other. My focus, however, in this part lies on the construction of an individual self, whether or not this self is considered to be normative (although I will refer from time to time to the mechanism of this binarism in normative processes). The other embodies everything that the self is not, and is thus not an external essence disconnected from the self, but a construction to externalise from the self those items perceived as ―different.‖ Within normativity, the ideal self is disconnected from non-normativity, since this is precisely represented by the ideal other. In the light of the heteronormative ideal, then, the gay person is constituted as the other, and as the other, he or she is inhuman, abnormal, unnatural, and so forth. In order to undermine this normative process, one has to show that the distinction between self and other is a social construction, and that the notions of ―self‖ and ―other‖ are socially constructed as well.
For the other to exist, the self has to create a fixed identity, a boundary between the things considered to be part of the self (or ―normal‖) and those things considered to be part of the other (―abnormal‖). This process does not have to be visible, and is in fact mostly invisible, but is omnipresent. The other is an exteriorisation of everything ―abnormal‖ in the self and needs to show what the self must not be, regardless of the presence of ―otherness‖ within the self. In this sense, the other is necessary to construct the self, to delineate it from everything outside the self. The other is constructed as both the outside and the boundary that De Poorter 28 divides the inside from the outside.32 The other is as much a structuring force in the creation of identity as the self, since both notions are created within the same process. This process is also utilised within normative processes, since the other is used to represent the outside and establishes what is perceived as non-normative in order to construct the non-normative.
The other, however, is more than the outside and the boundary of the self, but is also within the self. The Freudian terms introjection and incorporation in the context of loss of the
(desired) other indicate that the distinction between self and other is not always clear-cut.
Judith Butler argues in Gender Trouble and ―Imitation and Gender Insubordination‖ that melancholy exists out of an incorporation of ( ―attributes‖ of) the lost other, ―a response to, and refusal of‖ that loss (1990: 73; 1991: 26) . The self can thus contain parts that were seen as distinctively other before. ―Identificatory mimetism,‖ as envisaged by Mikkel Borch-
Jacobsen and Ruth Leys, is similarly concerned with deconstructing the self/other binarism and its concepts of self and other. Butler argues that identificatory mimetism ―precedes
‗identity‘ and constitutes identity as that which is fundamentally ‗other to itself.‘‖ (Butler
1991: 26, original italics) She continues in stressing that identificatory mimetism is not a result of loss of the desired object, like melancholic incorporation, but ―precede[s] and constitute[s] desire (and motivation) itself‖ (ibid.). Hence, the self cannot be seen as separate from the other, but as comprising out of many different aspects of others. Rather than the theory of the self being influenced by an (unacknowledged) loss, as typified by melancholic incorporation, this theory scrutinises the way the self and the other itself is constructed by those appropriations.
32 For an excellent discussion on the outside as ―the transgression of the border which is necessary to constitute the border itself,‖ see Diana Fuss‘ ―Inside/Out‖ (Fuss 3). De Poorter 29
Hence, the binarism self/other does include ―the contaminated other‖ precisely because of its ―exclusion‖ policy (Fuss 3). It pulls the other from obscurity and posits it in the centre of attention, but at the outskirts of thought. The revelation that homosexuality was treated as an ―open secret‖ during the Victorian age, is in this mindset not as much a revelation as the logical result of identity politics. The introduction of the other into the world of the self has the power to transform the self into the other. Hence, the self can be constructed as the other, but the other also as the self, indicating that both concepts are constructs that are in a continuous balancing act, as Butler argues in her introduction to Bodies that Matter
(especially p. 8).
―The self only becomes a self on the condition that it has suffered a separation,‖ this separation, it should be stressed, is performed in and during the construction of identity
(Butler: 1991: 27). The notions of self and other, and the distinction between them, are thus not pre-existent but constructed and arbitrary. In order to expose this nature, the distinction has to be deconstructed, by proving how self and other are concepts that need each other to signify identity, by showing that the self is an untenable position, or by demonstrating that
―difference‖ between humans cannot lay the basis for a hierarchical construction of self versus other. ―Difference‖ is ultimately an enacted notion, a person is different because (s)he reveals and believes to be different, denying the presence of similarities in order to protect her or his identity, even though that identity is constructed within dominant social discourses.
Performative Identity
A last notion vital to understanding identity and sense of selfhood is how it is constituted. According to Butler, who also coined the phrase ―performativity,‖ an identity, whether this is perceived as a gender, sex, sexuality, and so forth, are all in constant dialogue De Poorter 30 with its surroundings, precisely because it is created in those surroundings.33 The theory of performativity argues, for example, that a person becomes masculine or feminine, precisely because of the actions and discourses that person (unwittingly) performs or partakes in. The constant reiteration of masculine or feminine ―behaviour‖ results in a sense of masculinity or femininity. This result, however, is obscured and reinstated as the cause of said actions, mentalities, and discourses. One is not masculine or feminine, one becomes it. This theory may not seem so strange, since ―gender‖ is generally conceived as a social construction, as something that is done. Yet, Butler stresses that identity, including gender, is not a status of result, but a process of result, something that a person does (and through which that person is constituted): ―[I]dentity is performatively constituted by the very ‗expressions‘ that are said to be its results‖ (Butler 1990: 33). Identity is not a fixed notion, once constructed, no longer open to change or influence. Rather, since the ―regulatory ideal,‖ or indeed any ideal, whether it is normative or not, is unattainable in itself, identity is always striving to be, but has always already failed in its attempt to be. It is exactly in this notion of becoming, according to Butler, that the possibility to undermine normative processes lies. Not only due to failure being inherent in this process with an idealised goal, but also due to the fact that ―reiteration,‖ a vital part of performativity, is not a repetition of the same thing (Butler: 1993: 10). Rather, every reiteration contains in itself small differences, ―gaps and fissures,‖ thereby making it impossible to create a uniform identity, or a ―single‖ self, but put it into a ―potentially productive crisis‖ (ibid.).
In Bodies that Matter, Butler elaborates on the notion of performativity, and explains how it functions with regards to the body. According to her, ―matter‖ does not exist before the
33 Note that Butler argues that ―[i]t would be wrong to think that the discussion of ‗identity‘ ought to proceed prior to a discussion of gender identity for the simple reason that ‗persons‘ only become intelligible through becoming gendered in conformity with recognizable standards of gender intelligibility [i.e. regulatory ideals]‖ (1990: 22). De Poorter 31 entrance into language or discourse, since the truly unthinkable cannot be fathomed nor exist.
When the body is created into discourse, the shape of body is a result of the dominant discourse; matter, as Butler argues, is materialised in ―relation to the productive and, indeed, productive effects of regulatory power in the Foucaultian sense‖ (1993: 9-10). In other words, those privileged in the dominant discourse, those on who the ―regulatory ideal‖ is based and who keep that specific ideal in place, have the ―right bodies.‖ The shape of the body is seen as something natural, and its ―naturality‖ permeates other aspects of the ―regulatory ideal‖ and assigns ―naturality‖ to them as well. Yet, ―naturality‖ is in itself a result of a ―reiterative or ritual practice,‖ since that image of the body, assumed to be ―natural,‖ a tenuous notion which is ultimately also the result of normative processes, is placed as the ―natural‖ body, the cause of those normative processes (Butler 1993: 10). Hence, one is not born male or female, one keeps on becoming it, since those two shapes are present from birth, but are reinforced and have to be, in order for ―maleness‖ or ―femaleness‖ to continue their hold on a person.
It is important to stress that this is not a case of pushing matter through a certain shape, but that in the shape, the body is materialised.34 Rather than the sense of losing a limb, for instance, the body is perceived as complete within normative structures, but might be seen as intrinsically flawed in non-normative surroundings. A crucial example of this, already touched upon before, is the body as an erogenous space. Within the normative shape of the body, only the vagina or the penis are perceived as the strongest erogenous zones on the body, eliminating all forms of sex, except vaginal, penetrative sex. Butler, as mentioned before, argues that the body in itself is erogenous, or rather that every part of the body can be erogenous. It should come as no surprise that in this context any body that is ostentatiously different from the normative shape is considered to be inhuman, or at least partly inhuman.
34 I am indebted to Professor Dr. Johanna Wagner for pointing this out to me. De Poorter 32
Butler thus argues that both aspects, like gender, already perceived as constructed and aspects, like biological sex, which seem essentialist, are constructed within the normative process of the regulatory ideal. Identity as a whole, then, is constructed. Yet, this statement is not without its weaknesses, since it seems to argue that identity is easily reconstructed. Butler stresses, however, that identity is created through its construction, not that a certain essence is moulded into a particular identity: ―[A]gency conditioned by th[e] very regimes of power/discourses cannot be conflated with voluntarism or individualism, . . . and in no way presupposes a choosing subject‖ (Butler 1993: 15). That construction depends greatly on normativity, as this decides what is normal and abnormal in an identity. The notion of a
―constructed identity‖ draws attention to the fact that the label of ―normality‖ (or
―abnormality‖) of an individual is socially created. This is, of course, true for homosexuality, but also for other characteristics, like egotism. The label egotism reduces an individual to that single characteristic, and changes the result of that egotistical action, i.e. the perception of egotism, to the cause of that behaviour.35 A sexual act between two men or women is similarly seen as homosexual, and this label is transposed from the result to the cause of the action. A person can never be homosexual, but only become (and continue becoming) homosexual. In this sense, sex between two people of the same sex is not homosexuality, if the result of that action is not perceived as ―homosexual.‖ Naturally, this is equally true for heterosexuality, one is not straight, but becomes it.
As a result, identity is open for any intrusion from outside, since the repetitive
―becoming‖ is influenced by external issues. A single act does not constitute identity, as the previous paragraph might have implied. Rather, actions and discourses are vital in the
35 I do not wish to defend egotism, but rather to disclose the fact that ―egotism‖ lies both in the eye of the beholder and the performer, and is constituted and perceived differently in different societies. The choice of egotism is no coincidence, since it plays an important role in both Angels in America and The Line of Beauty under the guise of responsibility/irresponsibility. Egotism is often considered to be responsible in the novel by conservative individualism, whereas it is perceived as irresponsible by left-wing liberalism. De Poorter 33 creation of identity, and most of these are performed unconsciously or are imposed from outside. A child becomes a boy or a girl by a mixture of internal and external forces, as Butler argues. Identity is no exception to this ―rule.‖ A label, exemplified in this context by egotistical or homosexual, is the result of these two forces, and the ―abnormal‖ label can be willingly adopted by non-normative individuals, as the normative ideology might have infiltrated and constituted consciousness, as mentioned before. An understanding of how performitivity works allows the individual to disrupt the regulations of the regulatory ideal, in order to either create a new regulatory ideal or in an attempt to create an ―open coalition,‖ an ideal-free society (Butler 1990: 22). AIDS/HIV, as I will attempt to prove, has the potential to expose identity‘s constructed nature.
AIDS/HIV36
AIDS/HIV exposes the normative process both in theory and in its imagery37, since it constantly fluctuates between human or inhuman, self or other. According to the first binarism, HIV is an inhuman invader of the human body, or rather inhuman body since risk groups are always already dehumanised to a certain extent. AIDS is the externalised version of that inhumanity, whether that inhuman aspect is intrinsic (―guilty victims‖) or acquired
(―innocent victims‖). AIDS thus lays bare the dehumanisation process of the regulatory ideal, and provides the basis for ―rehumanisation‖ as well as the prevention of dehumanisation. The
36 The argumentation put forward in this part is a set of examples how AIDS/HIV can disrupt and expose identity. Some of these examples also return in my analysis of the following works, but I wanted to demonstrate that AIDS in itself has the potential to expose and disrupt the normative process, not just in literature. AIDS, of course, does not need to disrupt identity in order to be taken seriously, nor is a PWA who does not perceive AIDS or HIV as a disrupting factor in any way less than a PWA who does. Theory in general has the tendency to ignore the humans about whom it is theorising, a feat of which I myself, unfortunately, am guilty as well. The experience of PWAs or their friends should thus be honoured more highly than this theory about AIDS, which merely tries to imagine one of the many consequences of seropositivity. 37 This ‗imagery‘ is profoundly western, since it is the image of the PWA depicted in the western media, notably with Kaposi‘s Sarcoma. Similarly, it is also the image used and disrupted in Angels in America and The Line of Beauty. The image of ―African AIDS,‖ for example, may differ from the western depiction, since the image depends greatly on opportunistic infections. Nonetheless, the final image of any PWA, from the point of view of the media and the ―general population,‖ is always one reserved to die, regardless of skin colour, gender, or nationality. De Poorter 34 person living with AIDS or HIV stresses the fact that (s)he is a ―person with a condition‖, not
―that condition‖ itself (Navarre 143). The rehumanisation process of PWAs is clearly present within the texts and within the AIDS activist movement, in their desire to depict PWAs as active, living, and human. Dehumanisation, however, is not merely the result of dominant normative processes. Within AIDS activism, despite attempts to counter it, normative processes can still be active, as Patton demonstrates in her analysis of AIDS Service
Organisations, which tend to be dominated by a gay discourse (see ―The AIDS Service
Industry‖ in Patton‘s Inventing AIDS). Being seropositive is not necessarily synonymous for being tolerant of other people, and seropositivity can cause a process of blaming and dehumanising others as well as the attempt to undermine such systems. As potent as
AIDS/HIV might be in disrupting the normative process, it can equally be used to maintain normativity by PWAs and by the ―general population.‖
HIV, as the ―inhuman intruder‖ represents the other penetrating the self, the outside invading the protected and enclosed inside. This otherness, in the general sense of the outside, within the self constitutes ―contamination.‖ The peculiar consequence of this mentality is the fact that the PWA-aspect of the individual is perceived as the other within the self, a rather grim externalisation of Foucault‘s phrase ―becoming other than what one is‖ (qtd. in Crimp
2002: 250). In order to overcome this feeling of duality, the PWA can acknowledge that otherness is a part of her or his sense of self, even before seroconversion, since it is the denial of otherness within the self that allows the process of blaming others for seropositivity. In order to overcome the process of blaming others, the seropositive, or indeed any person can accept that the self is a construction open to influence from outside, and hence constituted by that otherness. It is the tolerance that might result from that openness that should be De Poorter 35 celebrated, since this can prevent dehumanisation.38 As Butler argues: ―We [are] undone by each other, ‖ AIDS is merely one externalisation of this hidden process (2004: 19).
AIDS, finally, also plays an important role in exposing performativity in the process of identity construction. A vital aspect of performativity, as mentioned before, is repetition, which Butler argues has always already failed. AIDS is one of the factors that can propagate and expose this failure. Yet, unlike drag performance which is done consciously, AIDS alters repetition in a manner unknown to the PWA. The repetition becomes invested with AIDS itself, AIDS ―infiltrates‖ the constructions of identity, and as Yingling would argue: ―AIDS signifies a collapse of identity‖ (292). For example, egotism becomes allowed in light of
AIDS as a certain type of self-protection. At the same time, altruism is celebrated within the
―AIDS community‖ as a larger version of self-protection (in this case, of the community.)
These characteristics, once thought to be intrinsic in an individual, are now connected with
AIDS to such an extent that it almost seems that they are caused by the presence of AIDS itself. The different perception of similar acts demonstrates that identity is constructed within a society, and that a label is imposed on a person as a result of a certain action and situation.
Similarly, sexuality is slowly undone by AIDS as again AIDS penetrates the repetition that establishes sexuality. The formative factor of sexuality is no longer perceived to be solely desire, but possibility and ability. Kruger hints upon this in his discussion of Tangled up in
Blue, in which the recently diagnosed Crockett desires a young man, and then instantly reflects upon his seropositive status. (1996: 93) In other words, PWAs are no longer perceived by society as hetero-, homo-, bi-, or any other kind of sexual but as ―AIDSsexual,‖ despite
38 One could argue that AIDS literalises this ideology, since it is a status in which the body is open to any opportunistic infection. Regardless of this logic‘s callousness, it misrepresents AIDS. Most opportunistic infections are already present in the body in some form. The argument that these infections and HIV are contracted from someone else, however right it may be, is an attempt to place a sense of guilt on the other, and to distance oneself from otherness (both internal and external). De Poorter 36 their own feelings or opinions. The social construction of sexuality is laid bare in the presence of AIDS, as the ―normal‖ sexualities are transformed into ―AIDSsexuality.‖ Paradoxically, it is this pathologisation of the PWA‘s sexuality that exposes the construction of sexuality.
Since one sexuality is reshaped as a different sexuality, pathologisation draws attention to the fact that sexuality is not innate, but constantly in dialogue with other sexualities and with other aspects of identity. The resistance to this pathologisation, on the other hand, also focuses on the fact that sexual actions do not define how a person self-identifies sexually, and points out that risk is characteristic of an action, not of a sexuality.
Lastly, performativity is similarly perceived in the victimisation of PWAs, as the actions and discourses of victimisation creates the notion of ―AIDS victim.‖ AIDS nor HIV are intentional actors which try to victimise the PWA, rather society creates a discourse to support this view. If a PWA refuses to be seen as a victim, he or she undermines the discourse that lies at the basis of the ―AIDS victim‖ image, and exposes the social construction of ―AIDS victim.‖ The dehumanisation process that is linked with this imagery is effectively undermined because the actions and discourses denoting inhumanity are not performed nor permitted, thus cancelling the ―victim‖ label. The wish to be perceived as human, not surprisingly, draws attention to the fact that ―human‖ and ―inhuman‖ are notions constructed in society. The speech act ―[w]e are ‗people with AIDS‘‖ creates humanity as well as combats dehumanisation of PWAs (Crimp 1996: 148). PWAs choose to perform humanity, rather than
―victim-hood,‖ exploiting the very process of performativity.
This theory of AIDS/HIV plays an important role in Angels in America and The Line of
Beauty, even though they may not seem to invest in a constructionist understanding of De Poorter 37 identity. AIDS may not conspicuously disrupt identity, it nevertheless influences it to a large extent and manages to expose the constructions of identity.
De Poorter 38
4. Angels in America39
AIDS40
AIDS holds a prominent place in Angels in America because of its equation with the
―virus of time,‖ and its central position in two of the three concurrent plots, namely in Prior
Walter‘s struggle with AIDS and the Angel and in Roy Cohn‘s struggle with AIDS and power
(Frantzen 138). Nonetheless, AIDS is used differently in these two storylines because of the different perception of AIDS by the two characters. AIDS, for instance, is not perceived as a gay disease by Prior nor as the result of a gay lifestyle; the origin of Prior‘s HIV antibody positive status is never revealed, even though the play stresses that a promiscuous gay lifestyle is not the sole possible cause of Prior‘s seropositive status. Louis, Prior‘s (former) boyfriend, wonders ―why [Prior] is the sick one,‖ since he ―fucked around a whole lot more than [Prior] did‖ (Perestroika 43). Moreover, Prior‘s two (former) lovers introduced in the play, Louis and Belize, are believed to be seronegative. Prior‘s self-diagnosis of AIDS, confirmed by the medical institution, is valueless, since the play does not search for an explanation why Prior has AIDS nor condemns him for his status. In other words, Prior has
AIDS because he has AIDS, and the search for an explanation of his status, according to the play, is an exercise in futility.
Unfortunately, this does not mean that society (human or angelic) does not make assumptions about Prior‘s ―condition.‖ The medical establishment, with the sole exception of
39 I treat Angels in America as a literary text rather than a performed play, so as to be able to do a close reading of the text, as created by Tony Kushner. I do however use the HBO adaptation of Angels in America when deemed necessary to point out differences between text and play. The play consists out of two parts, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, to which I will refer to in subsequent quotations (Millennium Approaches is for economical reasons shortened to Millennium). 40 The distinction between AIDS and PWAs in this analysis and the analysis of The Line of Beauty is at best an arbitrary one, and may at times even impede my intention to demonstrate that AIDS does influence identity in these works. Nonetheless, I feel that AIDS (and HIV) need to be discussed separately from the experience of AIDS, so as not to collapse these two aspects of the novel. De Poorter 39
Prior‘s nurse (played by the same actress as the Angel), treats Prior as a medical case, rather than as a human. Whilst Prior is enumerating his ailments for the benefit of his nurse, Emily, he intimates that his dentist is wearing ―little condoms on his thumb and forefinger‖ because of Prior‘s ―fuzzy tongue‖ (Millennium 74). More alarming, however, is the degree of negligence with regards to Prior‘s treatment. Prior‘s dermatologist, for example, leaves for
Hawaii without referring him to another doctor, and when Prior does reveal his hallucinatory state to his doctors (even though he is hesitant at first, because of the ―concupiscence‖ he experiences during the hallucinations [44]), they only check for toxins in his bloodstream, as if the hallucinations must be drug-related, medical or recreational (Millennium 74). 41 Emily, on the other hand, despite having a full waiting room, takes the time to ask Prior how he is feeling, and warns him that ―loneliness is a danger‖ and to see a therapist (Millennium 75).
She also notes the ―stress‖ caused by being seropositive as one of the contributing factors to
Prior‘s hallucinations (Millennium 75).42 Belize, the other nurse in the play, performs a similar task for Roy Cohn, a Jewish republican lawyer, after his doctor leaves him in the hospital. Ultimately, it is Belize, not the ―very qualified, very expensive WASP‖ doctor who advises Roy not to undergo radiation for his so-called ―liver cancer‖ since it would ―kill [his]
T-cells‖ (Perestroika 13).
41 The fact that Prior believes that the medical establishment will change his medication solely because he has erections echoes the dominant fear of sexually active ―AIDS carriers,‖ who continue to infect others and spread the ―disease.‖ Note also that the search for toxins in blood has a second implication, since it reinforces the notion that HIV is solely active within the bloodstream, even though Harry, Roy‘s doctor, implies that HIV can cross the ―blood-brain barrier‖ and cause dementia, a disorder of which Prior is showing initial symptoms, when he forgets how many days he has been in the hospital and Belize unsuccessfully tries to ―jog [Prior‘s] memory‖ (Millennium 29, 43). The search for an explanation for Prior‘s hallucinations in his bloodstream is not only ineffective, but also disregards Prior‘s other symptoms. By performing this test, AIDS becomes a disease of the bloodstream, rather than a syndrome that allows opportunistic infections to affect vital organs. 42 This does not mean that Emily makes no other assumptions about Prior. When Prior is hospitalised for the first time, Louis is sitting at his bedside, and Emily asks him if he is ―his...uh? [lover]‖ (Millennium 35). Rather than taking into account the possibility that Louis is his roommate, brother, or close friend, AIDS allows Emily to jump to the conclusion that Prior is gay and Louis his lover. In a certain sense, Prior is protected from this equation because he already self-identifies as gay, unlike Roy who ferociously fights this notion but also maintains it, by situating himself out of that equation. De Poorter 40
On the other hand, the Angelic society chooses Prior as their prophet to stop progress because they think he has nothing to lose and everything to win. Due to the fact that Prior is supposedly dying, the Angels find in him the perfect champion for stasis, ―the AIDS virus
[sic] is supposed to ensure his desire to stop time‖ (Frantzen 144). The two heralds, Prior‘s ancestors, sent to him to prepare the way for the Angel, were chosen by the angels precisely
―because of the mortal affinities‖ (Millennium 66). In choosing these two ancestors as the heralds, the Angels emphasise Prior‘s impending death. Even when Prior in Perestroika returns the book and the prophecy of stasis to Heaven, the Angel Australia councils him not to turn away from the ―Tome of Immobility,‖ since to ―drink from its bitter water‖ is to ―never thirst again‖ (89). Yet, it is precisely Prior‘s act of defiance, the restitution of the prophecy, that changes Heaven. The prophet who was supposed to stop progress in human society, returns to Heaven to preach progress to the Angels, as the phrase ―[t]hus spake [sic] the prophet‖ indicates (Perestroika 88). The transformation of Heaven is immediately implemented; no longer is the word ―God‖ followed by a ―[t]hunderclap‖, but by a ―[s]ofter rumble of thunder‖ (Perestroika 88, original italics). This initial change becomes more rigid later on in the play, when the Angels do file a ―[p]aternity suit‖ against God, who as Roy admits himself, is ―guilty as hell‖ (Perestroika 92).
Together with this change from stasis to progress, a more decisive change for AIDS occurs. Despite a plenitude of warnings, the Angels do grant Prior‘s wish to be blessed with more life. They no longer equate AIDS with death, since they themselves give Prior more life, and he himself repeats this blessing to the rest of the world: ―And I bless you: More Life.‖
(Perestroika 99). The ―plague,‖ however, cannot be stopped, as Prior requests, since the
Angels ―[d]o not know how‖ (Perestroika 88). Prior transforms the blessing from a ―selfish‖ act to a necessary act; if the world is to survive ―Apocalypse Descending‖ we need to bless De Poorter 41 each other, we need to help each other (Perestroika 89). In this fashion, Angels in America is a play about loneliness, none of the characters feel they have a place where they belong, a network to fall back on. But the epilogue drastically changes this, with a circle of friends for
Prior from unlikely corners of the world, or as David Savran prefers to define it: ―[A] utopian concept of erotic affiliation and a new definition of family‖ (16). The inclusion of Hannah into this circle demonstrates that AIDS and suffering can frighten people (like Louis) but can create a sense of community as well (like Hannah).
AIDS is refashioned from a solitary and isolating experience to an inclusive constituent, one that transgresses so-called risk-groups and communities. Even though Prior is protected from serious AIDS-phobia, because of his life within the (―high-risk‖) gay community, it is the circle constituted by his having AIDS that redeems his wish for more life. The play enacts what Prior posits by rejecting the Angels‘ prophecy of stasis. The Angel commands Prior: ―If you do not MINGLE you will Cease to Progress‖ (Perestroika 29). By staying put within the proscribed communities, angelic and human society would be saved from destruction, according to the Angels. Yet Prior refutes this logic: progress and change are ―what living things do‖ (Perestroika 88). More important, Savran notes, is the fact that Prior equates progress with desire, a desire for ―being alive‖, a desire to be with the ―Other‖ (Perestroika
88-89; Savran 21). Prior, the play, and this vision of AIDS combine people from different communities, destroying their bounds to specific communities, and create unlikely friendships and networks. This network of friends supports Prior in his life with AIDS, and provides the
―hope‖ which Prior seeks but cannot find (Perestroika 89-90). Hence, this group of friends gathers at the fountain of Bethesda in the epilogue for a reason, as the fountain is itself a symbol of hope, being a cure for disease in the new millennium. Hannah, who was initially distant to Prior, promises Prior to take him to the fountain in the new millennium, and De Poorter 42 provides a new beacon of hope for Prior. She, herself, also becomes a sign of hope for Prior, proving that AIDS is not the end of Prior‘s life nor prevents him from leading a sociable life and meeting (mingling with) new people. In this sense, Harper, Joe‘s wife and a valium addict, is similarly endorsing Prior‘s theory, since she meets new people and migrates to other parts of the world, when she travels to San Francisco. She even envisions this theory as the basis of the ozone layer, which consists out of a ―great net of souls‖ (Perestroika 96).
AIDS, metaphorised as the ―Virus of TIME‖ in the Angel‘s prophecy,43 is ultimately not the end of civilization but the means by which civilization progresses into a new society
(Perestroika 27). This civilization is no longer based on the ―Reaganite‖ irresponsibility embodied by Louis and Joe both leaving their partners, but on the ties of friendship and support, on ―radical human responsibility and action-for-the-other‖ promoted by AIDS activist groups and personified by Belize and Hannah (Omer-Sherman, ―Jewish/Queer‖: 85).44
Gone is the fear that the destructive terminology of the virus induces, instead time as hope becomes the new ideological power: the new millennium approaches, perestroika will take place. This ideology undermines the metaphor of plague, often noted in dominant discourses about AIDS. AIDS may still be perceived as a plague by Prior and the Angels, but ―not nearly all [of us]‖ will die, again drawing on time as hope to undermine the sense of fear connected with the plague metaphor.
43 The play uses two metaphors for AIDS, which are also mentioned in Sontag‘s AIDS and its Metaphors. The metaphor of ―time‖ and of ―change‖ are in Prior‘s prophecy transformed from a negative symbol to a positive, hope-giving symbol (Sontag 107, 154). Note also in this context Pearl‘s belief in AIDS heralding ―change, argument, politics, complexity, and, paradoxically life‖ (775-776). 44 In this approach to ―Angels in America,‖ Joe, and to a lesser extent Louis, are perceived as ―conflicted charlatans wallowing in their own hypocrisies‖ (Minwalla 114). I do not wish to argue that Joe is irresponsible, nor that he has no means to become responsible (since AIDS is not a prerequisite for responsibility), but that he is still in a process with an unknown goal. The film adaptation Angels in America shows Joe‘s progression more clearly, as he is standing at a crossroads in his life, in need of companionship. De Poorter 43
The function of AIDS in Roy Cohn‘s case has a similar aspect but a very different usage, since Roy is not protected from AIDS-phobia as Prior is, not being a part of a protective ―high-risk‖ community. In ―Strange Angel: The Pinklisting of Roy Cohn,‖ Michael
Cadden argues that Kohn is ―pinklisted,‖ made gay, in the play in order to test ―[h]ow broad, how embracing‖ the gay community can be (Kushner quoted in Cadden 83). This, surprisingly, is enabled by the notion of AIDS as a ―gay disease.‖ Like the real homophobic and AIDS-phobic journalistic reactions to Roy‘s death due to an AIDS-related opportunistic infection, Roy is presumed gay precisely because he has AIDS. Were it not for Roy‘s admission that he is a ―heterosexual man . . . who fucks around with guys‖ (acknowledged only after the seropositive diagnosis), the non-prejudiced spectator would not have known that
HIV transmission between two men was the most likely route of transmission in this case
(Millennium 32).45 Roy thus epitomises Cindy Patton‘s notion of the ―queer paradigm‖
(Kruger 1996: 41). Patton argues that ―once you test positive for the HIV antibody, regardless of how you contracted the virus, you become nominally queer‖ (ibid.). Hence, Roy‘s sexual acts do not make him gay in the play (a notion that he himself strongly refutes), but the fact that he has AIDS.
This prejudice is not only supported by official institutions but is also self-imposed. Roy himself ―misrepresent[s]‖ AIDS as a ―disease‖ that only ―homosexuals have,‖ eliminating the possibility of him having or accepting the fact that he has AIDS (Pearl 767; Millennium 32).
By renaming his condition, Roy postpones the moment he has to deal with AIDS and with the consequences of having this syndrome. Consequences already implied by his doctor thinking in terms of risk groups, since that would mean that Roy can no longer choose how he wants to self-identify, but that an identification will be imposed on him by others. When the committee
45 It seems counterproductive for a play that tries to challenge common conceptions of AIDS, to base the ―queering‖ of one of its characters on the prejudice that AIDS is a ―gay disease,‖ but in doing so the play exposes the stigmatising processes of AIDS. De Poorter 44 rules on Roy‘s disbarment, for example, ―[o]ne of the main guys on the Executive leaned over to his friend and said, ‗Finally. I‘ve hated that little faggot for thirty-six years‘‖ (Millennium
74). AIDS forces a certain category on Roy and takes away the identity which Roy may have had before his seroconversion, an issue Roy alludes to when he confides in Joe that the
American Bar Association will try to disbar him because ―[t]hey smell [he is] weak‖
(Millennium 50). AIDS is here clearly perceived as a destructive concept, rather than a building stone for a new society.
The destructive force of AIDS is perpetuated in Roy Cohn‘s death, whereas Prior survives with AIDS precisely due to its (and his) ability to construct a new society. In order to exemplify this matter, AIDS is in the play equated with death, but at the same time this equation is disrupted and the play shows that it is possible to live with AIDS. Roy, on the one hand, embodies the demise to AIDS, since he is perpetually shown as worsening until he dies at the end of Perestroika. From the moment he enters the hospital, the stage directions do not allow the character Roy to experience any remission: ―The pain in his gut is now constant and getting worse,‖ ―[h]is condition has worsened‖ (Perestroika 32,50). Roy can only suffer with
AIDS, he cannot live with it. In fact, from the moment Roy enters the hospital, the verdict seems clear. In answer to Roy‘s question if he is going to die soon, Belize, his nurse, says:
―Probably. Probably so.‖ (Perestroika 12). Roy thus enforces the image of the PWA as continuously hospitalized, without any hope of recovery or remission. Prior, on the other hand, is depicted as Roy‘s opposite. Even though Prior is from time to time hospitalized, his bouts of sickness are often transitory and unforeseen, nor are they introduced by stage directions. Prior is said to be ―one of the lucky ones‖ and ―pretty healthy for someone with no immune system‖ (Millennium 75). In a direct inversion of Roy‘s situation, Emily, Prior‘s De Poorter 45
nurse, tells him he will ―live for years, probably‖ (Millennium 75).46 Prior‘s bouts of infection, moreover, seem to others and to himself to be incurred by his own actions. Prior‘s collapse at the Mormon Visitors‘ Centre invokes not only Prior‘s comment that he ―overdid it,‖ but also Emily‘s reprimand that he ―threw it [his recovery, or perhaps his life] away‖
(Perestroika 64, 65). Whereas Roy is the perfect ―AIDS victim‖ destined to die, Prior is the person living with AIDS who controls his own destiny.47
Roy‘s situation, however, is not all doom and suffering, as AIDS does show a constructive potential even in a situation as barren as his. When Roy is hospitalised, Belize calls Prior in order to tell him ―who just checked in with the troubles‖ (Perestroika 10). Belize ends this call with the phrase: ―Fetch me the hammer and the pointy stake, girl. I‘m a-going in‖ (ibid.). Roy Cohn seems to have made himself unpopular with many people, but is, due to his hospitalisation, confronted with two particular ―enemies‖: Belize, his ―negation‖, and
Ethel Rosenberg, a ghostly apparition, ―the little Jewish mama‖ who he wanted to get ―the chair‖ (Perestroika 46; Millennium 82, 83). AIDS confronts him with these two characters, but also provides Roy with the opportunity to be forgiven by them. Belize personifies in this context the gay community, which Roy wronged and betrayed, and Ethel the victims of Roy‘s continuous illegal interfering as well as his Jewish mother.48 Both have the power to forgive
Roy and effectively do so because of his long and painful death due to an AIDS-related illness. Belize intimates this when he says: ―He [Roy Cohn] died a hard death. So maybe... A queen can forgive her vanquished foe.‖ (Perestroika 82). Ethel undergoes a similar process
46 Note how ―probably‖ in both situations is used to support the notions of AIDS as death and AIDS as life respectively. At the same time, however, it also introduces doubt into these statements. AIDS is a symbol for incertitude, one is never sure how and when AIDS will develop. This doubt remains to the very end, even though the uncertainty expressed about Roy‘s case proves to be ungrounded. When Prior hopes in the epilogue ―to be around to see‖ the Bethesda fountain in the summer, this doubt resurfaces and casts a shadow on his desire (Perestroika 99). 47 That Prior wrestles with the Angel in order to return the prophecy is a powerful reminiscence of the image of the wilful human, ungoverned by any external force. 48 Omer-Sherman argues that Ethel says the Kaddish for Roy Cohn because he is the ―metaphoric son who abandoned her‖ (―Jewish/Queer‖ 94). De Poorter 46 when she helps Louis say the Kaddish for Roy (Perestroika 82-83). This forgiveness, however, is not the (sole) result of Belize‘s and Ethel‘s humanity, it is Roy‘s death that invokes the act. When Ethel reveals to Roy her reason for visiting him during his last days
(namely to find out whether she can forgive him or not), she admits that she cannot forgive him, but only ―take pleasure in [his] misery‖ (Perestroika 74). Only when Roy is actually dying can Ethel find it in her heart to sing him a song in order to comfort him, and to say the
Kaddish.
The oppositional character of Roy‘s ―destructive AIDS‖ thus provides the background for Prior‘s constructive experience of AIDS, and is moreover used to emphasise the positive nature of ―constructive AIDS.‖ Nonetheless, this dualism, this structuring of constructive and destructive AIDS, is shown to be as ineffective as any other valuation of AIDS/HIV. As mentioned before, Prior‘s wish in the epilogue to see the Bethesda fountain in the summer is not beyond doubt, a doubt which stems not only from the use of ―probably‖ but also from the encapsulation of ―constructive AIDS‖ within ―destructive AIDS.‖ Indeed, one of the main side effects of this opposition is that both perceptions of AIDS are influenced by the other.
The distinction made between these two types of AIDS, the epilogue suggests, conceals the ambiguous nature of AIDS. The ―statuary‖ angel of the fountain best resembles this ambiguity, since it ―commemorate[s] death but . . . suggest[s] a world without dying‖
(Perestroika 98). AIDS has the ability to destroy but also to construct. To call Prior‘s experience of AIDS constructive and Roy‘s destructive would simplify the experience of
AIDS to one single emotion. In fact, Prior does experience the destructive side of AIDS, as his relationship with Louis ends because of Prior‘s seropositivity, while Roy experiences the constructive side of AIDS when Belize and Ethel forgive him. This dual pattern also functions within the field of identity, whose construction is exposed and deconstructed in order to create De Poorter 47 a more egalitarian society without dehumanisation processes, in which all individuals will be
―citizens‖ (Perestroika 99).
PWAs
The constructive aspect of AIDS is not only the basis for a new society, but also exposes and undermines the normative binarism human versus inhuman. AIDS in Angels in
America is represented as a truly human experience, as Hannah says about Prior‘s lesions:
―It‘s a cancer. Nothing more. Nothing more human than that‖ (Perestroika 68, emphasis added). The concept of AIDS/HIV as a foreign and inhuman entity is thus undermined and turned into something decisively human. At the same time, the equation of AIDS/HIV with the ―Virus of TIME‖, which ―began‖ in humans, establishes HIV as distinctively human
(Perestroika 27). It would be wrong, however, to argue that AIDS/HIV in the play is solely human, since the Angels ―suffer with You [humans]‖ (Perestroika 88). Even though the origin of HIV is unknown, this does not make it any less human, or indeed inhuman. In
Prior‘s logic, moreover, what constitutes as really inhuman would be paralysis or stasis in the face of AIDS/HIV. The person who ignores the fact that AIDS/HIV exists or who fails to participate in a network of support for PWAs, is truly inhuman, not the person living with
AIDS. The irresponsible person, like Louis or Joe, is ultimately inhuman, and yet they too are still human. Even though Louis ―fail[s]‖ in his love for Prior, he is still loved by Prior
(Perestroika 95). Joe‘s loneliness at the end of Perestroika echoes Harper‘s solitude in the beginning of Millennium Approaches, and like her he needs help from others. Both characters need a network of support, a circle of friends in order to reinstate their humanity.
As humanity and inhumanity are concepts that no longer function in Angels in America, the dehumanisation process of AIDS/HIV is interrupted. The greatest potential for De Poorter 48 dehumanisation in the play for Prior and Roy lies respectively with Hannah, a Mormon, and the medical establishment, symbolised by Belize and Henry, Roy‘s doctor.49 When Prior collapses at the Mormon Visitors‘ Centre, Hannah has only to call a cab and send him to the hospital in order to erase Prior from her life, instead she accompanies him to the hospital. This act represents more than the ―altruism‖ that is required from middleclass women, a notion
Patton discerns in AIDS Service Organisations (21). Even though Hannah, as a Mormon, is supposed to condemn Prior for his sexuality and perceive AIDS as the rightful retribution of his sin, she refuses to do this. In fact, Hannah warns Prior not to ―make assumptions about
[her]‖ since she does not ―make them about [him]‖ (Perestroika 67). Moreover, Hannah does not help Prior out of an altruistic compassion, since pity is ―just not something [she has],‖ instead she helps him out of a sense of identification, as both Prior and she are alone and ―not needed elsewhere‖ (Perestroika 66, 68).50 Prior therefore becomes a replacement for
Hannah‘s son, Joe, and Hannah replaces Louis, Prior‘s former lover, as the person ―tak[ing] care‖ of Prior, in order to alleviate their sense of loneliness (Omer-Sherman, ―Jewish/Queer‖:
94). Hannah and Prior break free from the restraints of their personal communities and
―mingle,‖ effectively becoming human, since migration is what constitutes humanity, in
Prior‘s (and the play‘s) worldview.
49 Note that two of the greatest sources of dehumanisation of PWAs, the government and the popular media, are barely present in this play. Indeed, the government only plays a part in Roy‘s plot and because of his privileged position, Roy is immune for any of its political processes. The popular media is mentioned only once, and again in the context of Roy‘s situation, as they gladly reported about his condition and ―demise,‖ yet without any obvious consequences for Roy. The most politically charged item for both Prior and Roy, however, is the AZT drug, since this drug is incredibly hard to come by. Roy, unsurprisingly, has managed through his connections to acquire the ―golden horde‖ (Perestroika 34). Yet, through Belize‘s theft of the drug, after Roy‘s death, it becomes subject to personal judgement, rather than to the government, effectively undermining its political status. 50 A vital question remains: Are pity and identification two different things, since pity cannot take place if there is no possibility of identification? Pity implies that one person is in a better situation, but knows how the other person suffers. Identification, on the other hand, is a copy of a specific situation, present in the lives of both persons. Clearly Hannah identifies with Prior‘s loneliness, as she also experiences loneliness. ―Pity‖ would undermine Hannah‘s sense of loneliness, and nullify her claim to it. Identification, however, is not an appropriation of the other‘s identity, but the recognition of oneself in the other. ―[R]ecognition is a reciprocal process that moves selves beyond their incorporative and destructive dispositions toward an understanding of another self whose difference from us is ethically imperative to mark‖ (Butler 2004: 144). De Poorter 49
Roy, as the victim of the destructive power of AIDS/HIV, does have to counter the dehumanisation process, from which Prior is relatively protected as mentioned before. In pointing out to his doctor, Henry, that his diagnosis of AIDS constructs Roy as a member of a risk group, Roy challenges Henry to articulate this assumption, thereby forcing Henry to resort to the more neutral statement: ―You have had sex with men, many many times, Roy.‖
(Millennium 31). Roy exposes the working of the aforementioned ―queer paradigm‖ in his resistance to the diagnosis of AIDS, yet in his discussion of ―clout,‖ Roy reveals another stigmatising operation (Millennium 31). AIDS/HIV first forces Roy out of his assumed (by him or by others) heterosexuality, because of the stigma that is wrongly attributed to AIDS, but due to the fact that he has AIDS (and therefore must be gay) he is pushed back into darkness, uncared for by the ―general population‖ since as a homosexual man, he can have no
―clout.‖ This attitude is, remarkably, not only licensed by Henry‘s distinction between risk groups and the population not at risk, but also by Roy, as he does not believe that homosexual men and women can have ―clout.‖ Roy self-identifies as a ―heterosexual man‖ who has sex with men, in order to keep hold of his humanity, his identity as a person with clout
(Millennium 32). Hence, Roy escapes the dehumanisation process precisely by reinforcing the dehumanising feature of AIDS in homosexual men and women.
Ultimately, this logic fails to save Roy from dehumanisation. Society has caught up with Roy Cohn, and has decided that he can no longer be human. His disbarment is merely the symbolic disintegration of his identity as a person with clout, of his humanity. Roy ―lost‖
(Perestroika 74). Yet, according to the play, this is hardly the result of his seropositive status, but of his inhumane actions as a person who still had clout, even though ―clout‖ in Roy‘s worldview classifies humanity. The characters in the play perceive Roy Cohn as not ―human‖, not because he has AIDS (which is a closely guarded secret), but due to his actions as a right- De Poorter 50 wing (and irresponsible) lawyer (Perestroika 60). AIDS, illness, and weakness are the conditions that allow Roy to be dehumanised, not the reasons of his dehumanization. At the same time, however, AIDS is also the provision for the reinstatement of Roy‘s humanity, albeit through a different register. Belize, Roy‘s nurse, and as a part of the medical establishment in the ideal position to further the dehumanisation process, is the main instigator of this ―rehumanisation.‖ As mentioned above, Belize, together with Ethel, forgives
Roy and ―manage to lend Roy a modicum of humanity,‖ proving the constructive ability of
AIDS (Minwalla 108). By forgiving Roy for his inhumane actions, Belize restores Roy‘s humanity, not as a person with ―clout,‖ but as a responsible person, since his AZT drug will save the lives of other PWAs. The fact that Louis, who initially questions Roy‘s humanity, has to say the Kaddish for Roy Cohn, adds to the trope of forgiveness as giving humanity.
Dehumanisation is thus effectively undermined by identification via AIDS. Hannah identifies with Prior in his loneliness and is able to see his humanity. Belize and Louis forgive
Roy Cohn, because of their identification with his ―hard death‖ from an AIDS-related disease
(Perestroika 82). The possibility of contracting or having HIV and die a ―hard death‖ (―AIDS community‖51) as well as their shared sexual preference (―gay community‖) permits them to identify with Roy and his situation. Ethel is, lastly, also able to identify with Roy‘s death in miserable conditions, as she was sentenced to death, partly by Roy‘s interference.
Nevertheless, identification is not the soul deconstruction of the self/other dualism in Angels in America. In a play in which almost every male character self-identifies as gay or has sex with men (and in which women, as Savran points out and Meisner rather sweepingly argues,
51 Note that ―AIDS community‖ is not a pre-existing community, but a community created around a PWA (or PWAs), and this may include everyone active in that community. The perception of the ―AIDS community‖ as strictly gay would thus undermine its inclusive and constructive character, furthermore it would create the notion that one is born into a community, rather than become part of a community. Every community is ultimately a construction, and membership is not innate but something that is appropriated. This is also true for the ―gay community,‖ since not all MSM or WSW self-identify as gay, and not every person who self-identifies as gay wants to be part of a ―gay community.‖ De Poorter 51 are grossly underrepresented), the main divide between characters is seropositivity.
AIDS/HIV is the boundary that constructs the outside apart from the inside, but at the same time disrupts that boundary. The notion of a fixed self, detached from the other, is slowly undone by the presence of AIDS, even though AIDS at first instated the division (―I have
AIDS, others do not; I do not have AIDS, others do‖).
Angels in America, as mentioned above, is a play about loneliness, but this loneliness stems from a sense of otherness with regards to the idealised normative self. The white, heterosexual male self has no part in this play, except for Martin, Roy‘s colleague, Henry,
Roy‘s doctor, and the American Bar Association. None of these characters or institutions have a real effect on the play, as Roy dominates the two first characters, and the ABA‘s disbarment and consecutive dehumanisation is similarly enacted (and revoked) by the other characters.
Even the true white, heterosexual male, God, is absent in the play, and is upon return sued by the Angels. The play hence raises the question if a normative self can truly exist, and if we are not all ―others,‖ or more correctly different, to each other. The play, as Tony Kushner himself also admits, glorifies otherness: ―Identify yourself as other, and identify your determining characteristics as those characteristics which make you other and unliked and despised‖
(quoted in Omer-Sherman, ―Jewish/Queer‖: 82). The epilogue together with Harper‘s final soliloquy support this ideology. The network of friends in the epilogue helps not only Prior, but also Louis, Hannah, and Belize; they are all in need of support to combat the loneliness in an ―irresponsible‖ world. Nevertheless, their argument about the Gaza strip renders visible their differences, and undermines the notion of ―same selves.‖ Their sameness, desperately needed to construct a dominant inside and a subordinate outside, is always in the process of being deconstructed by their difference. Likewise, their identification within the group depends on the other members of that group, not only because their relationships are De Poorter 52 constituted in relation to each other, but also because they appropriate characteristics from each other. This identificatory mimetism, or as Hannah calls it ―interconnectedness,‖ is most apparent in Hannah, who effectively becomes a ―New Yorker‖ through her experience of
AIDS with Prior (Perestroika 98, 97, original italics).
If an indeterminate otherness deconstructs the twofold self/other, a desire to disrupt difference is similarly active in the deconstruction of the private self. After leaving Prior behind in the hospital, Louis goes to the ―Rambles‖ in Central Park to pick up a one-night stand. When the condom breaks, Louis tells the man to ―[k]eep...keep going. infect me. I don‘t care. I don‘t care‖ (Millennium 41). In a reverberation of Freud‘s theory of incorporation, Louis equates Prior with AIDS, and desires to be infected with HIV himself, so that the difference with and the loss of Prior would be annulled. Louis fails to ―avow‖ Prior‘s loss, and creates the emotionless void in which he finds himself for the most part of the play
(Butler 1990: 87). Ultimately, the melancholic Louis remains invested within his desire for
Prior, and is therefore unable to commit to Joe. This interpretation is maintained further by the fact that the man in Central Park and Prior are played by the same actor. Louis‘ bruises from his fight with Joe can in this light be interpreted as an attempt to identify with Prior‘s KS. Far from having a morbid wish to copy AIDS, Louis knows that the only way through which he can ever reconnect with Prior is to experience the same pain of abandonment and betrayal, in other words the pain which he inflicted on the other, Prior. Louis needs to give up his self and become the other, the ―victim,‖ in order to ―atone‖ for his misdeeds. This, however, does not result in complete restoration, since Louis‘ quest to become the other is again a sameness in disguise. Prior does not allow Louis to ―come back,‖ so that there is no elite group within the group of friends constituted by AIDS (Perestroika 95). Louis has to learn what Prior discovered through AIDS and his prophesy of progress and migration, namely that otherness De Poorter 53 is innate in everyone, that the self is constructed out of many different others. A static self and a static other is ―feeble‖ (Perestroika 78). People mingle, migrate, change, and progress; self and other cannot stay the same nor apart.
Lastly, AIDS/HIV, as mentioned above, has the potential to introduce otherness into the self, whether this self is normative or private, blurring the distinction between self and other, but also demonstrating that the distinction was nonetheless imaginary. As discussed above,
AIDS in Roy‘s situation is equated with homosexuality, by both himself and the medical institution. When Roy thus contracts HIV and develops AIDS, homosexuality enters Roy‘s self. If homosexuality was merely another name for men who have sex with men, this process would be superfluous, since Roy already self-identifies as a man who has sex with men. Yet homosexuality, as Roy (rightly) points out, does not ―tell you who someone sleeps with‖, but where ―an individual so identified fit[s] in the food chain‖ (Perestroika 31). Hence, with the introduction of the ―other‖ (homosexuality), Roy loses his ―self‖ (a person with clout, heterosexuality). But without Joe in the Justice Department in Washington, Roy had no clout in the ABA, who already despised him for his otherness as a ―filthy little Jewish troll‖
(Millennium 49).52 Hence, Roy is even in his self confronted with his otherness, and his distinction on the basis of ―clout‖ is proven to be a fallacy, as Roy never had enough clout to protect himself from the ABA without Joe. His clout, moreover, is always restricted to the people who allow him to have clout. Belize, for example, is not impressed by Roy (and to a certain extent has power over Roy as his nurse), whereas Martin, even though he never knows what Roy knows, compliantly follows his orders.
52 The irony of this issue is that Roy might have had more influence on Joe as a gay man than as a conservative lawyer. De Poorter 54
Roy‘s clout, furthermore, is laid bare by AIDS as constructed, rather than inherent to his identity. Roy depends on his clout to be considered human in Reaganite, conservative society, and perceives his clout as an essential part of his identity; his entire world view is based on this vision of clout: ―I see the universe, Joe, as a kind of sandstorm in outerspace with winds of mega-hurricane velocity but instead of grains of sand it‘s shards and splinters of glass‖
(Millennium 4). It is his clout, his ability to negotiate the problems hurtling towards him that allows him to be in the middle of that sandstorm.53 As mentioned above, Roy‘s separation on the basis of clout is in itself a flawed system, seeing that clout was relatively unattainable, but the little influence that Roy does have is disrupted by AIDS, demonstrating that the entire concept of clout is constructed through actions, rather than the cause of those actions. On his hospital bed, Roy still tries to exert his clout in order to influence the ABA‘s decision, but his telephone calls are disrupted by ―abdominal spasm[s]‖ (Perestroika 32, original italics). Not only his telephone calls are disrupted by these spasms, but also his attempts to outdo Ethel, who merely laughs at his pain (Perestroika 33). Roy‘s pain worsen exceedingly, and he is eventually given morphine to stop the spasms, the final blow for someone who believes ―pain
[i]s life‖ (Perestroika 11). As Roy slowly worsens, AIDS demonstrates that without his continuous interference, Roy has no claim to clout. Consequently, Roy is disbarred by the
ABA and ―defeated‖ by Ethel. His last attempt to fool Ethel is equally his last attempt to show any form of influence, and even though he succeeds in fooling Ethel, he dies soon after. His last action, putting an imaginary telephone on hold, is an admission of his loss of influence; unable to resist the onslaught of life, he puts life on hold and dies.
53 Roy‘s telephone system takes on a deeper meaning in this context, as it becomes a symbol for his ability to ―multitask‖ and withstand the constant barrage of telephone calls, or more poetically splinters of glass. His demand to have a more elaborate phone system in his hospital room is ultimately a wish to hold on to that last token of humanity, since Roy deems it impossible to ―perform basic bodily functions‖ on a simple telephone (Perestroika 14). His gratuitous reaction to Belize‘s attempt to take the phone from him (―You touch that phone and I‘ll bite. And I got rabies.‖ [Perestroika 33]) signifies his fear of losing his clout and humanity. De Poorter 55
AIDS disrupts not only Roy‘s sense of identity, but also Prior‘s identity, albeit with less drastic consequences. When Louis tries to reconcile with Prior, he tells Prior he was ―too much of a victim, finally. Passive. Dependent.‖ (Perestroika 52). This process of victimisation, however, is precisely resisted by Prior but sanctioned by Louis. The fact that
Prior has not even thought of himself as a victim of AIDS until Louis mentions it indicates that ―victimhood‖ is not a personal experience. The discrepancy between Louis‘ image of
Prior as victim and Prior‘s self-declared status of prophet emphasises the fact that Prior does not consider himself passive or dependent, but active and with a mission and message for mankind. ―Prior moves ahead, not in spite of AIDS but rather because of AIDS. The ‗virus of time‘ has jolted him out of torpor and self-pity.‖ (Frantzen quoted in Omer-Sherman, ―The
Fate of the Other‖: 9) Louis‘ victimisation of Prior is the main reason of him leaving Prior, since Louis cannot live with the image of Prior he created, but it is Prior‘s resistance to that image that ultimately paves the way for Louis‘ return. Yet, Louis has to fulfil a specific condition before he is allowed to return, Prior has to see ―bruises,‖ ―black and blue,‖ and
―blood‖ (Perestroika 55). As mentioned above, Louis needs to experience the victimisation which he performed on Prior, in order to acknowledge the damage that he caused. This victimisation cannot be self-induced, as ―bruises inside‖ are not satisfactory for Prior, but needs to be seen (Perestroika 55). Louis and Joe‘s struggle, the ―victimisation‖ which allows
Louis back into Prior‘s life, literalises the need for an outsider to place the label of victimhood on oneself, as it is a social construction placed on an individual.54 ―One is not oneself in isolation but only in contrast to, in solidarity and negation with a variety of other selves‖
(Kruger 1997: 154)
54 One can of course self-identify as a victim of a crime, but it is important in this context to remember that seropositivity is not a crime, and the label ―victim‖ that is given to PWAs creates an image of passivity, which Louis does by calling Prior a victim. De Poorter 56
AIDS, finally, exposes the construction of identity together with, not surprisingly, drag.
In the dream sequence with Harper, in which Prior is ―in the process of applying the face,‖
Prior soliloquises about the goals of his drag (Millennium 20). ―One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste,‖ yet AIDS disrupts this desire, which is transformed into performance by its very utterance: ―One wants...But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?‖ (Millennium 19). His drag performance fails utterly, and Prior believes he resembles ―a corpse,‖ or at best ―a corpsette‖
(ibid.). ―Even drag is a drag,‖ when its performance is impeded by the presence of AIDS
(ibid.). Whereas drag shows that identity and gender are constructed notions and appropriated through a process of actions, AIDS demonstrates that the ideal result is unattainable, and the performance, already given away by Prior‘s ―hands and feet,‖ is doomed to fail (Millennium
20). AIDS ultimately exposes the fallacy of identities perceived as static or complete, as Prior wipes the ―make-up off with his hands, smearing it around‖ after the avowal that his ―heart is pumping polluted blood‖ (Millennium 23). Any identity, inspired by drag or not, ultimately fails, in this case realised by AIDS.
The disruption and exposure of identity in Angels in America is the logical consequence of its depiction of AIDS/HIV. The powerful trope of AIDS as change and hope enables the shift in worldview, as indicated by Prior‘s different perception of the world after he hands back the prophecy of AIDS as stasis, and the deconstruction of identity in order to connect with other human beings and retrieve a hope once lost. The other vital depiction of AIDS, its power to construct and repair relationships, gives Prior the possibility to undergo the disruption of identity and learn from it. Prior at the end of Perestroika is different from the
Prior in Millennium Approaches, since he no longer constructs his identity by being in opposition with the other, Louis, but acknowledges that his identity is constantly constituted De Poorter 57 by the others in the epilogue, who all contribute to and disrupt Prior‘s final monologue. ―The
Great Work Begins,‖ Prior promises to the spectator, indicating that ―each and every one‖ takes part in the ―Great Voyage‖ of humanity (Perestroika 99, ibid.; Millennium 2).
Yet, the play argues that those who willingly segregate themselves from others, who refuse to help in the AIDS epidemic, and who persist in their ―criminal neglect,‖ will experience the destructive side of AIDS, and will not ―survive‖ the disruption of their identity, as Roy tragically literalises (Yingling 295). His isolation is the result of his identification in opposition to the other, both the ―gay other‖ and the ―Jewish other,‖ and his reluctance to identify with anything other, even though the other, as demonstrated, is always already part of Roy. This isolation also prevents Roy from surviving the shift in his identity, caused by AIDS. As his identity is deconstructed by AIDS, Roy has no other possibility than to ―die‖ in the presence of his two ―others,‖ Belize and Ethel, who may have helped him through the shift in identity, if only he had let them. Their act of forgiveness, then, represents a part of the abovementioned ―Great Work,‖ in that it counteracts Roy‘s irresponsible negligence and enables ―interconnectedness‖ between these three characters despite their differences. ―You are fabulous creatures,‖ Prior once again intimates, including those who may have been despised before (Perestroika 99).
De Poorter 58
5. The Line of Beauty55
AIDS
At first sight, The Line of Beauty does not treat AIDS/HIV as an influential, consequential aspect of eighties society. In the upper class world of the rich and mighty in
London‘s fashionable Kensington neighbourhood, HIV is just one more item that is part of the poorer part of society, with its lack of moral standards and decorum. AIDS/HIV, however, appears in all parts of society, and the upper class in the novel is no exception to this rule. In penetrating the world of the high and mighty, AIDS in The Line of Beauty exposes the fragility of upper class society, as well as its double moral standards. In a manner similar to
Henry James‘ observations, AIDS allows high society to continue pretending to be
―wonderful‖ and ―beautiful,‖ unaffected by the epidemic as they are, but at the same time enables the rest of society, the ―outsiders,‖ to look ―right through‖ its facade (140). In this sense, AIDS and homosexuality, since there seems to be no clear distinction between these two notions in the novel, have a tinge of dissidence, opposing the Thatcherite society of the novel. AIDS/HIV helps construct the novel‘s themes of beauty and responsibility in an irresponsible age, even though AIDS appears relatively late in the novel.
Like the mechanism of seroconversion, AIDS retrospectively rewrites the novel and gives meaning to previous unimportant observations, such as Leo‘s ―chesty thing‖, a possible indication of a repressed immune system (101). The novel itself can be divided into three possible stages of seroconversion. The first part ―The Love-Chord‖ represents the public‘s ignorance about the possibility of AIDS or HIV. Set in 1983, the chapter alludes to the general ignorance of AIDS outside the small gay community in big American cities and the
55 For economical reasons, the quotations in this chapter, unless stated otherwise, are all from The Line of Beauty. De Poorter 59 scientific world. Even if the British gay community was aware of its existence, obviously not the case in the novel, the protagonist Nick Guest, in his protected ―heterosexual‖ surroundings, would have been blissfully oblivious of its existence. The first subdivision of the novel is thus also a symbol for Nick‘s inexperience in the ―gay scene.‖ As Nick is introduced to his homosexuality, in the strict sexual sense of the word, by Leo, Nick‘s first lover, he is also introduced into the world of AIDS and HIV, an insight which is only gained retroactively, after the discovery of Leo‘s HIV antibody positive status. The dramatic irony between the knowing 21st-century reader and the ignorant characters is brought to a climax in the character of Pete, Leo‘s former lover, who has ―not been well‖ (102). Consequentially, this part of the novel relies on the notion that AIDS is a ―gay disease‖ in order to let dramatic irony take place, since Pete‘s seropositivity is not confirmed until the third part of the novel.
If, on the other hand, the reader would ignore Pete‘s status (by obstinately refusing to equate
AIDS with homosexuality), he or she would miss the emotional effect of the scene between
Pete, Leo, and Nick. Pete‘s presence seems to give a sense of finality to the scene, which portends the finality of Leo and Nick‘s relationship and dominates the rest of the chapter. At the same time, Pete‘s presence, as the third other in the relationship, imitates the constant threat of AIDS, present in the other two parts of the novel.
The second part of the novel, ―To Whom Do You Beautifully Belong?‖, symbolises
Nick‘s emergence and membership of ―gay society,‖ as well as his first contact with and discovery of AIDS/HIV. This section, set in 1986, focuses on Nick‘s sexual exploits within the world of anonymous gay sex and with Antoine ―Wani‖ Ouradi, a closeted gay man, heir to the enormous Mira supermarket fortune. Yet, the novel seems to suggest that this knowledge comes with a prize, that is AIDS and HIV. In the Ponds, a gay cruising area, an ―old man‖, the ―embodiment of the spirit of the place‖, says to Nick: ―George has gone, then. Steve‘s just De Poorter 60 told me, went last night‖ (182). Still permitting the reader to avoid the possibility of AIDS, the novel takes away all doubt with Pat Grayson‘s death. The actor Pat Grayson, a ―silly old queen,‖ close friend of the Feddens, the family with which Nick is staying, is the first character of whom it is explicitly mentioned that he died of an AIDS-related illness (79). This acknowledgement is nevertheless not easily made. In an attempt to cover up Pat‘s ―roguish‖ behaviour, the Feddens blame his death on ―some extraordinary bug‖ which Pat contracted in the ―Far East‖ (334). It is Catherine Fedden, Nick‘s closest friend and rebel of the family, who finally discloses the true cause of Pat‘s death: ―He had AIDS! . . . He was gay. . . he liked anonymous sex‖ (335).
Finally, the third and last part of the novel, as the title seems to suggest, is death
―caused‖ by AIDS. ―The End of the Street‖, which takes place a year later in 1987, concludes the process of AIDS/HIV and tries to finish any unfinished business. Every prominent gay man introduced in the novel, and who actually partook in sexual activities between men, have contracted HIV and have died or are in the process of dying. This part reveals that Pete had
AIDS and died, Joe had AIDS and died, Wani has AIDS and is doomed to die, and Nick himself believes that he has HIV and that he is going to die soon as well. This repetition of discovery of AIDS and subsequent acknowledgement of death implies that death is the sole possible outcome for the PWA. Moreover, the process, represented by the subdivisions of the novel, respectively contraction, discovery, and death, invokes the same ideology, namely that
HIV always develops into AIDS, which always results in death. The unmentioned intervals between the three parts, together with the erasure of Joe and Pete from the novel until the discovery of their death, further implies that living with AIDS is just not possible. Even though the reader does not know when Wani contracted HIV and there are some indications of Wani‘s situation in the second part of the novel (mainly weight loss), the announcement of De Poorter 61
Wani‘s AIDS provides a clear break with the previous energetic ―Wani.‖ Wani, in ―The End of the Street‖, is depicted as the passive patient, ill and on the verge of dying.56 Nick similarly disappears from the novel, and turns the corner of the street, because he suspects that he has
AIDS. A mere suspicion, enforced by the fact that Nick is gay, is thus evidence enough to give up on life.
The Line of Beauty, as mentioned before, looks back from the 21st century to the eighties, but in doing so, the novel inadvertently equates AIDS with the eighties itself. The disappearance of all seropositive characters in the novel – not all of them die, Nick and Wani simply fade away – suggests that AIDS also vanishes from the society within the novel.
Although the last part of the novel is set during the acme of the AIDS epidemic, Nick is oddly unaware of AIDS as an epidemic. Instead, he still considers AIDS as an exclusive experience happening to him and his friends. Walking down the street, in which he lived with the
Feddens for almost four years, Nick imagines how his friends will react to the news of his death, which again seems inescapable. At this point in the novel, Nick‘s circle of friends comprises both straight and gay friends, and yet he can only imagine ―bewilderment‖ at the news of his seropositivity (501). Nick‘s idea of AIDS is a crisis that is under control, and only happens to those few people who took risks. This belief is of course much more closely related to the 21st century than to the eighties, during which the HIV spread seemed unstoppable. The novel, however, combines this anachronistic image of the eighties with prejudices active during the eighties, such as AIDS being a ―gay disease‖ or punishment for
56 It is surprising that Wani, with all his wealth and connections, could not get his hands on AZT, the first antiretroviral drug, which was already ―widely available in the UK in 1987‖ (Taken from the website of the UK- based AIDS activist group Avert, which has a reliable and annotated overview of AIDS history within the UK [http://www.avert.org/hiv-treatment-uk.htm, last accessed on 4 August 2010]). The change from the asymptomatic to the dying Wani in less than a year, furthermore, is incredibly harsh for someone with the best medical care that money can buy. The rapid change seems to maintain the notion that any person with AIDS will die sooner or later, and rather sooner than later. De Poorter 62 the sin of homosexuality, creating in this manner a damaging and wrong image of society in the eighties.
AIDS as a ―gay disease‖ is an extremely powerful notion in the novel, not in the least because it permits the upper class to continue living in ignorance, but also because it seals the fate of any gay man in the novel. As mentioned above, all prominent gay characters contract
HIV and develop AIDS, or rather have AIDS, the novel does not mention HIV or its possible relationship with AIDS. Accordingly, AIDS becomes the responsibility of ―homosexuals‖ in general, who are ―going to have to learn‖ to practise safe sex (339). Safe sexual practices are similarly thought to be only applicable to ―gay‖ sexual practices, and the use of a condom in
―heterosexual‖ sex is an indulgence rather than an obligation. Catherine discovers Nick and
Wani‘s secret love affair after an incident with her father about ―a rubber johnny floating in the lav‖ (344). Although the point of blame is quickly placed on Catherine (since Jasper and she are thought to be the only couple in the house), she concludes that the condom had belonged to Nick, as Catherine did not use a condom and who else but ―gay‖ Nick would have needed a condom. The sense that gay people are in general more at risk is further strengthened by the news of Pat Grayson‘s death. This revelation results in Nick ―feeling the
AIDS question rear up, sudden and undeflectable, and somehow his responsibility, as the only recognized gay man present.‖ (332) The gay man is always the person with AIDS, any other possibility is highly unlikely.
The reverse is also true: the PWA is always gay. AIDS is used as the factor which
―outs‖ the closeted gay man, and not only destroys his future, but also his reputation. Wani, who had most to lose by coming out and vehemently resisted the idea, was brutally ―outed‖ by AIDS in the novel. In the last part of the novel, in which the upper class (personified by De Poorter 63
Gerald) is exposed for its immorality, the press runs the story of Nick and Wani‘s ―Gay Sex
Romp‖ (469), along with the headline: ―Peer‘s Playboy Son [Wani] Has AIDS‖ (468). Wani, whose lifestyle was never a closely guarded secret, is perceived as gay, because he has AIDS
(and perceived as a PWA because he is gay). The investigation into the possibility of Wani‘s being gay is based on the revelation that he has AIDS, not because of any specific lifestyle.
The press is not interested in Wani‘s extravagant daily life (as there is no mention of his cocaine addiction), but only in the fact that he is seropositive, which seems more than enough to pull him from his pedestal.
The link between AIDS and homosexuality is so strong in the novel that a sense of irony and sarcasm infiltrates any discussion of ―gay AIDS,‖ as with most aspects of this novel.57 Leo, for example, would also have been ‗homosexualised‘ by AIDS, were it not for the fact that his mother cannot believe that ―her son was [a] sinner‖ (408). AIDS and Leo are almost ridiculed since Leo, according to her, must have ―got it off a toilet seat at the office‖ or off ―a sandwich‖ (408). Moreover, Nick‘s discussion of AIDS as a ―gay disease‖ with Sally
Tipper is open to an extremely sarcastic reading, personified in the figure of Wani, who takes on the image of a conservative polemicist, a firm believer in ―no sex before marriage‖ (340).
This sarcasm is merely one feature of the sarcastically inclined omniscient third person narrator, who derides the London upper class, often judging them ―smug‖ (443). Even though the book does allow this somewhat hopeful reading, it simultaneously undermines the sense of ―tragedy,‖ which the book tries to confer (Flannery 297). Ultimately, the novel fails in exposing the dire consequences of calling AIDS a ―gay disease,‖ since the gay characters in the novel believe and continue to believe in this notion, even if the narrator‘s sarcasm is
57 Eastham in his article ―Inoperative Ironies‖ approaches the irony in the novel as a way to ―protect [one‘s] independence from use value, ethics and social life‖ (510). This irony, however, functions predominantly in the exposure of the upper class, rather than in a ‗rehabilitation‘ of AIDS or PWAs. Nick ―attempts to cultivate a position of ironic detachment‖ in order to observe the political aristocracy from a position of artistic independence (Eastham 511). De Poorter 64 effective in exposing the upper class. Nick still believes at the end of the novel that he cannot escape AIDS, and laments his ―short life‖ without any diagnostic proof of seropositivity
(501).
A notion closely related to AIDS as a gay disease is the opinion that AIDS is a punishment for the sin of homosexuality. Again, this belief is exaggerated to such an extent in the novel that it collapses into sarcasm, with aforementioned consequences. Nevertheless, this rhetoric is as widely accepted as the logic of ―gay AIDS,‖ with the sole exception of the gay community, which, unsurprisingly, contests this point of view since that would mean that homosexuality is indeed a sin. The denunciation of homosexuality in The Line of Beauty is most clearly heard within the conservative upper class and the conservative Christian community. The Tipper family, the epitome of the conservative upper class, note that AIDS is the normal result of homosexuality, since ―[t]hey had it coming to them‖ (340), they ―brought it on [themselves]‖ (339). Homosexuality is likewise perceived as a ―mortal sin‖ by Leo‘s mother, a devout Christian (408, original italics). AIDS in her mindset articulates what the upper class merely alludes to, as she clearly and blatantly calls AIDS a ―punishment‖ (ibid.).
AIDS as punishment, however, is also translated into guilt of contracting HIV, an aspect which only appears in The Line of Beauty of the two literary works. The use of this mentality in the novel, however, is an anachronism, since it is a product of the ―post-epidemic‖ era, in which knowledge about HIV transmission is considered widespread.58 First considered in the second part, set in 1986, only one year after the first International AIDS Conference in
Atlanta and one year before the (in)famous ―tombstone‖ AIDS advert in the UK, this mentality presupposes a completely effective and unprejudiced information campaign, which
58 See the chapter ―AIDS/HIV‖, subchapter ―AIDS is not the Result of Moral Decrepitude‖ for Crimp‘s discussion of ―AIDS guilt‖. De Poorter 65 was far from achieved in Great Britain in 1986. When Wani tells Sally Tipper that ―[t]here‘s
[sic] really no excuse for getting the thing now,‖ he cannot but speak from a position within the gay community, of which he does not want to be part (340). The irony of the matter, if one can call it that, is that Wani does contract HIV and thus demonstrates the ineptitude of the
AIDS information campaign, which is ultimately not mentioned in the novel.
The true irony in this denunciation of homosexuality as immoral lies in the fact that those morally superior people are exposed as immoral themselves, and often to an extreme extent. Maurice Tipper, for example, is exposed as an embezzler in his dealings with Gerald
Fedden, who not only resigns as a conservative MP because of the charge, but whose extramarital affair is also discovered and publicised, but not broken off. Barry Groom, depicted as a particular conniving man, treats Nick in an extremely foul manner, calling him a
―stupid little pansy,‖ a ―little cunt‖, and a ―little ponce‖ (473, ibid., 476). Barry himself, however, is a ―multiple adulterer and ex-bankrupt‖ and as Nick says: ―[T]o be hated by him was surely a mark of probity.‖ (477) Moreover, Wani, whose view of homosexuality is always a mixture of a conservative background and a progressive lifestyle, is not entirely
―clean‖ either, as his addiction to cocaine reveals. The discrepancy between this immoral behaviour and Nick‘s so-called immoral homosexuality accentuates the highly tenuous position of the conservative upper class to judge other people. Homosexuality is used as the scapegoat to place the blame on if something goes awry, a duty Nick compliantly performs in the Fedden household. His dismissal allows the Feddens to continue their lives as if nothing had happened and to believe that now Nick is gone, everything will return to ―normal.‖
Within this political landscape of blame and guilt, AIDS, in a fashion similar to Angels in America, acquires the notion of responsibility, whereas the government, the upper class, is De Poorter 66 the symbol of irresponsibility. Nick admits that ―[v]oting always gave him a heightened sense of irresponsibility,‖ because he not only gives a sense of power to the electoral candidate, but he also feels he is throwing away his vote, as the ―Conservative was bound to get back in‖
(394). The Conservative candidates are indeed portrayed as alarmingly irresponsible, most notably Gerald Fedden who, as Catherine points out, ―despised his constituents,‖ and would have been ―completely happy‖ if he didn‘t have to be ―MP for somewhere‖ (270, original italics). Gerald uses politics to gain power and influence (in Roy Cohn‘s phrasing ‗clout‘), rather than to represent his constituency and its interests in the British government. Yet,
Gerald proves to be inept in his political role and his exposure as a fraud merely seems a matter of time. It comes as a great shock to Nick‘s mother, a firm supporter of Gerald Fedden, that Gerald ―relie[s] on briefings by hard-working secretaries and assistants‖ (277). Gerald‘s shortcomings are further emphasised by a comparison with Morden Lipscomb, an American politician, whose ―paper on SDI‖ Gerald did not read ―beyond those first few pages‖ (142).
His (temporary) resignation in the last part of the novel is the long anticipated poetic justice, or as Flannery sees it: Gerald‘s ―ascent as a political star‖ is a ―stillbirth‖ (Flannery 301).
The novel, however, gives another reason for irresponsibility in the voting process, as it is an ―eternal secret‖ (394). Nick‘s political dissidence (he votes for the Green Party) is never fully known and the responsibility that accompanies this dissidence is drowned in the irresponsible nature of the upper class. The secretive nature of the vote prohibits any public action against the negligent government, and the irresponsibility of the upper class continues undisturbed. AIDS, on the other hand, creates the possibility in the book to show responsibility in an irresponsible age. In his confrontation with Wani‘s seropositive status,
Nick can choose between acting responsible or irresponsible. Not surprisingly, Nick chooses to continue supporting Wani, even in the public frenzy which ensues after the tabloids‘ De Poorter 67 discovery of Wani‘s seropositivity and gay love affair. This leads to the destruction of Nick‘s private life and his expulsion from the upper class society, in which he previously circulated.
Nick‘s actions are juxtaposed with the negligence of the government and of the general public, most notably in ―Gusto,‖ a restaurant which Wani and Nick helped make famous, but which now believes ―Wani‘s presence [is] no longer good for business‖ (431). Moreover,
Nick‘s responsibility is reinforced as extraordinary by the protective circle Wani‘s family draws around him. When Wani is escorted into his parental house, ―the sustaining social malice of the past two hours [abandon] him at the threshold‖ (442). In the outer world, outside the protective realm of the Ouradi family, only Nick cares for him and acts responsibly, and in a sense is a family for Wani.59
Yet, Nick is guilty of irresponsibility as well, particularly in the light of Leo‘s seropositivity. Although the true reason for the break-up is not entirely revealed, the fact that
―Leo was ill‖ played a part in their separation, more than Nick cares to admit (401). This admission returns more poignantly later on in the novel in Nick‘s recollection of the last time he had seen Leo. Even though Nick does recognise Leo, and recognises that he is ill from the
―gauntness of his features,‖ he refuses to admit the recognition and prefers to go home with an unknown man (424). ―[Nick] was a coward. He was frightened of him – afraid of being rebuffed and full of grim doubts about what was happening to [Leo]‖ (424). This cowardice is allayed by Nick‘s responsibility towards Wani, who at that time already discovered that he has AIDS. Nevertheless, the irresponsibility haunts Nick and affects the final scene between
Nick and Wani, since Nick already suspects that Wani will not return from his trip, yet
59 This peculiar arrangement in the novel is most likely a social criticism of the hypocritical conservative family values of Thatcherite Britain in the face of the AIDS epidemic. This critique is echoed in Nick‘s reply to Wani‘s aforementioned remark on premarital sex: ―But if we‘re never going to get married...‖ (340). The ambiguity of this sentence, either it alludes to the fact that not all straight people marry or to the fact that gay men and women are not allowed to marry, again focuses on the discrepancy of rights and privileges between straight and gay men and women. De Poorter 68 abandons him in his time of greatest need, by leaving Wani alone with his nurse. Nick is thus wedged in between liberal responsibility and conservative irresponsibility, echoed by his ambiguous position in the Feddens‘ atmosphere: ―[A] loyal affirmation of the Feddens‘ and
Kessler‘s world, hedged with an ironic detachment which he believes grants him carte blanch from associations with Thatcherism‖ (Eastham 513).
Wani‘s loneliness, however, is vital for the image of AIDS in the novel, as AIDS is essentially an isolated and solitary experience. Unlike Angels in America which focuses in part on the communal experience of AIDS/HIV, The Line of Beauty emphasises the fact that
AIDS excludes the PWAs from their communities and friends. Nick is the perfect example of this process, as his inclusion in upper class society has always been as the ―odd man‖ at a dinner party (122). The final scene of the novel uses the image of an ―empty street‖ as a metaphor for Nick having AIDS, although as said before that is a belief not yet proven to be correct (501). ―There was nothing this man [a neighbour] could do to help him. None of his friends could save him. . . . He seemed to fade pretty quickly‖ (501). The novel portrays Nick as part of an entirely different world, ―projected far forward,‖ no longer socially active in the upper class society, or indeed in society itself (501). The neighbour and Nick‘s friends are kept ―apart,‖ Nick yearns to ―know their affairs‖, but will never ―find out‖ (501).
This vision is echoed in the title of the last part of the novel ―The End of the Street,‖ yet the final image is not a dead end but a street corner. The corner itself has multiple explanations, of which the corner into a new road, into a new life, is clearly the most positive one. This new road, however, does not need to be a new life, merely a new status, a new world, one intrinsically connected with seropositivity. On the other hand, the corner can be the liminal space between the two worlds, so that Nick is neither in upper class society, nor in De Poorter 69 the gay or seropositive community. The final sentence supports this viewpoint: ―It wasn‘t just this street corner but the fact of a street corner at all that seemed, in the light of the moment, so beautiful.‖ (501) Nick idealises and beautifies this moment, and thus allows beauty, a powerful notion in the novel, to resurface once more. 60
PWAs
Humanity in The Line of Beauty is constructed by two concepts, beauty. Of these two notions, beauty is by far the most present in the novel, as its title, an art term in itself, demonstrates. Nick studies style in the novels by Henry James, Wani, together with Nick, his
―aesthete‖, creates the magazine Ogee, an ode to beauty (209). The Feddens‘ house in Notting
Hill is filled with ―beautiful things,‖ and Hawkeswood, Rachel Fedden‘s ancestral manor, is filled with works of art ranging from paintings by Cézanne to desks ―made for Mme de
Pompadour‖ (7, 51). Beauty, however, is also attributed to people and constitutes their humanity. Nick‘s ideal of homosexuality, for example, are ―aesthetically radiant images of gay activity‖ (25). This Jamesian ―ironic aesthetic sensibility‖ is not only disrupted by the presence of AIDS/HIV,61 but is also disrupted in other contexts of dehumanisation (Eastham
509). Catherine, despite being the daughter of ―two good-looking parents, does not have her brother‘s ―sleepy beauty‖, instead her father‘s ―large confidence-winning mouth had been awkwardly squashed into the slender ellipse of [her mother]‖ (8). The two disparate features of her face almost embody her ―volatile‖ disposition, presumably bipolar disorder (6).
Catherine‘s partial dehumanisation in the novel is thus equally expressed in her partial beauty.
60 This border in between proves to Eastham‘s declaration that an ―independent space for an aesthete‖ cannot exist (524). All art, all beauty is trapped in between the political world of the upper class and the aesthetic world, represented here by the gay community. Rivkin responds to the question ―To Whom Do You Beautifully Belong?‖ posed by the novel in a similar fashion, as the artist is forced to share his or her ―authorial rights‖ with the ―highest bidder‖ (290). 61 I am indebted to Professor Dr. Buelens for pointing this out to me. De Poorter 70
AIDS/HIV has no place in this worldview of ―gay beauty,‖ as the PWA is depicted and imagined as a person ―disfigured‖ by his or her illness. This ―debeautification‖ does not happen in the novel, but a change in the perception of beauty occurs. Even though the PWA no longer has the beauty he or she once had, another kind of beauty has usurped its place.
Beauty is consequently not a ―rare thing,‖ as Eastham attempts to argue, but ubiquitous in
Nick‘s Jamesian perception of the world (Eastham 525). Nick‘s first confrontation with AIDS is in an unknown man at the Ponds, who ―had grown perceptibly thinner, into an eerily beautiful, etched-out version of himself‖ (186). Leo also keeps a certain type of beauty, as his image gives Nick ―the warmth of a blessing‖ (423). Even though Leo ―was much too skinny .
. . to excite him, and too odd,‖ Nick envies Leo‘s lover (423). Likewise, Nick thinks that
Wani ―still look[s] wonderful in a way,‖ even though the comparison between the ―two‖
Wanis was ―unbearable‖ (431-432). The Ogee magazine emphasises this notion as it is
Wani‘s beautiful ―masterpiece‖ and restores Nick as a ―mensch‖ (489). The magazine redeems what is lost in the scandal surrounding Nick and Wani, and reinvests them with grandeur and beauty. The change in appearance is always observed but never condemned, the
PWA remains beautiful and human in a somewhat different manner. It is, however, the difference itself that acquires beauty, as the street corner does in the final scene. Precisely because they, like Nick in the end, belong to that liminal place, they regain a lost beauty.
In spite of its treatment of Nick, the upper class, never loses its beauty, nor does Nick ever debeautify the Feddens, unlike Russell, Catherine‘s former boyfriend, whose photographs of Toby Fedden‘s birthday party at Hawkeswood Manor are ―purely malicious, making everyone look like fools‖ (98). Nick distances himself from the tabloid press by refusing to follow that blaming pattern, and continues to consider the Feddens ―old friend[s],‖ even though they have publically ―disowned‖ him (499). Due to his decision to return the key De Poorter 71 to the private garden, which he was tempted to keep, Nick amicably frees himself from the family, saving himself from ―painful and pointless‖ returns to the house (500). Nick nonetheless sees through the facade of the upper class and observes that the Nothing Hill house is a ―house that encourage[s] the view its inhabitants had of themselves‖ (492). Rather than plotting revenge, Nick poignantly kisses goodbye to the only link left with the house,
Toby‘s photograph taken in Oxford. In the photo, time is ―hold back‖ in a state of beauty, and in this situation Nick remembers his time at the Feddens‘ home (494).
In contrast to his desire to be accepted in the upper class, Nick distinctively remains the other, never part of that world. Seropositivity in The Line of Beauty externalises this feature, since AIDS is treated as a ―gay disease‖ in the novel, and is thus always already a ―disease‖ of the other.62 As mentioned before, Nick is the odd man out in the upper class society of the
Feddens. He fulfils the role of ―an obliging guest,‖ a ―servant‖ in the household, as he normally looks ―after the house‖ while the Feddens are abroad, but more importantly looks
―after the Cat [Catherine]‖ (Eastham 524; Rivkin 290; Hollinghurst 280, 7). Guests of the
Feddens are often ―puzzled by Nick‘s presence‖ in the household, as if his presence is a false note in a piano concerto, a recurring image in the book (119). ―His presence [is] not thought necessary‖ at a ―posh white hetero‖ party, nor is it required at ―a noisy party with cans of beer and trails of smoke,‖ to which Leo, his lover at that time, has been invited (130-131). Nick is not considered part of the family but of the ―household,‖ and even Elena, the housemaid who
Nick expects will support him, judges Nick as ―no good‖ (Brooker 109; Hollinghurst 475).
Wani, regardless of his wealth, is likewise excluded from the upper class, not due to the fact that he is seropositive per se, but because he is not white and British, or rather English.
62 Of course, homosexuality is the Other in this novel, but the focus here lies not on the normative self and other, but the personal self. Homosexuality, according to Nick and Wani, is part of that self, even though it does contribute to their perception of other by the upper class. De Poorter 72
Wani‘s foreign nationality continues to haunt him, despite the prominent position of his family within the Conservative party and with the PM, mainly obtained by generous donations to the party‘s funds. The concealed racism of the upper class prevails in their private dealings and, surprisingly, affects the Feddens as well since they are Jewish. This, however, does not hinder Gerald Fedden from calling Wani ―a bloody A-rab,‖ when he is defeated at a game of boules (356). The racial stratification inherent in the upper class condones their feelings of ―disgust at [Wani‘s] illness and remembered unease about his origins,‖ even though he is ―a child of the fellow-rich‖ (490).
Nevertheless, both Nick and Wani believe to be part of the elite, and act as members of the elite, as ―insider[s]‖ (Brooker 107). Although Nick longs to be the Jamesian independent aesthete, observing the upper class but not part of it himself, he counteracts this desire by his attempts to improve his social standing. Joseph Brooker alludes to Nick‘s mission to climb the social ladder by drawing attention to the ―parallel‖ between Margaret Thatcher and Nick, as well as to his his privileged status as a member of the ―public school‖ system (107).
Ultimately, Nick constructs a dominant self by expelling his ―otherness.‖ He alienates his family in Barwick as they constitute the middle-class background that separates Nick from his upper-class contemporaries at Oxford. His preference for ―nig-nogs,‖ as Wani so eloquently states it, can consequently be read as a desire for the other, which he expels from his self but also needs to define his self (191). Likewise, Nick‘s severance from and disdain for his home town and his family indicate a wish to constitute it as the other, against which he can oppose his self. Wani‘s sexual escapades with Ricky, a working class man from the Ponds; with
Tristão, a Portuguese waiter; and perhaps even with Nick suggest a similar desire for an otherness, which he disavows in himself. Nick and Wani construct their identities in opposition to expelled others in order to adhere to the rules of the elite. De Poorter 73
AIDS, thus, performs a vital function in the novel: to reveal the hypocrisy of the upper class (which is also performed by irony, as Eastham suggests) and to demonstrate the presence of otherness within the self. Due to his seropositivity, Wani is forced to withdraw from the social scene in which he previously was an active and influential member. One of the most poignant examples of this is the business lunch in Gusto, which makes him sick and which forces him to go back home. More importantly, however, Wani is obliged to stop using cocaine, in order to save his ―weak‖ heart (490). Cocaine, a symbol for the upper-class social scene, is the last link between Wani and his upper-class identity, and losing this would destroy his former identity completely. Yet the destruction of his identity is literalised in Nick‘s imagination by a death due to a ―massive heart attack,‖ from cocaine use (490). Even though
Wani depends on cocaine to remain part of the upper class, using it would also result in his death; in other words, Wani‘s former self has become unattainable, and despite Wani‘s presence at Nat‘s wedding, AIDS prevents Wani from being completely part of that dominant society, if he indeed ever was.
The scandal surrounding Wani‘s HIV antibody positive status influences Nick‘s position in the upper class as well, although Catherine‘s role in the revelation of Gerald‘s affair already affected his position within the family, as he was supposed to keep an eye on
Catherine. In contrast with Wani‘s situation, Nick has no wealth to protect him from the recriminations of the upper class and his ―absence‖ from Nat‘s marriage suggests that any attempt to reclaim his former identity would be futile (486). The disparity between Nick and
Wani, however, runs further than mere wealth, since Nick alienated his family, his otherness, in an effort to conceal his background and gain status, whereas Wani‘s endeavour to conceal his background was shared by his family. Nick is once again stuck in between a normative self and a non-normative other, and this peculiar combination of identities results in a ―lack of De Poorter 74 surprise‖ about the disclosure of the two scandals, as his self considers such behaviour normal in the upper class, and his other knows that these things are ultimately always revealed (472).
AIDS impedes a return to either part of the dichotomy, and Nick has to acknowledge that the world and he have ―changed‖ (500). His ―drift[ing]‖ becomes a symbol for the liminal status of his identity, he is neither self nor other (501).63 He simply ―fade[s]‖ out of memory (501).
The fact that Nick‘s identity fades away in the end is but partly the result of a combination of self and other, important though those notions may be in The Line of Beauty.
A more important cause of the disintegration of Nick‘s and Wani‘s identities is the introduction of ‗AIDSsexuality‘ into the novel. Sleeping in front of a ―heavy-duty video,‖
Wani is depicted as unable to show lust or sexual desire, whereas he used to be an avid aficionado of pornography (484). Yet, ‗AIDSsexuality‘ has larger implications for homosexuality in the novel. AIDS impedes the sexual desire and actions necessary to ‗be‘ homosexual in the novel, and in this manner exposes the construction of the label
‗homosexuality.‘ Wani effectively ―loses‖ his homosexuality once he discovers he is seropositive and has full-blown AIDS. This loss is emphasised by Roy, Wani‘s nurse, and
Nick‘s flirting over ―Wani‘s stooping head‖ (485). The discrepancy between this scene in which Wani is left out, and the threesome with Ricky, in which Nick is the outsider, reinforces Wani‘s position as asexual, or rather ‗AIDSsexual.‘ Indeed, from a position of a ferocious sexual predator in the second part of the novel, Wani becomes completely passive in the third part, befitting for a true ―AIDS victim.‖
Interestingly, despite the exposure of the construction of homosexuality by AIDS, it is still perceived as the most essential and decisive part of one‘s identity, and if that essential
63 Note that Nick does not merely take on a different form of otherness, now that he can no longer be part of the upper class, since Wani did leave him a legacy, of which he can live comfortably, and he still belongs to the Oxbridge elite. De Poorter 75 element is taken away, identity collapses. It is not surprising then that Wani ―fade[s] from view in the middle of the day,‖ after he leaves Nick, his last link with ‗homosexuality‘
(486).64 Nick‘s identity is ultimately similarly subjected to this fading process after he ―loses‖ his desire for the motorcyclist living across the road: ―Nick gazed at him and then looked away in a regret that held him and glazed him and kept him apart‖ (501).65
On the other hand, an important aspect of the novel is that characters are represented as
―play-acting‖ (18). The disruptive ―intruder,‖ AIDS, exposes this play-acting and deconstructs the identity linked with this acting. The trope of the theatre is often used in the novel to expose idealised identities in the upper class, as part of the more general irony, and is always voiced by Nick in his privileged position of the outsider within (Brooker 107). During his visit to the Ouradi family, Nick looks at the reflection of the room in a ―tilting mirror‖ and observes the family like ―actors on a set‖ (211). Later on, Nick again discerns a degree of
―play-acting‖ in Toby and Wani, who share ―assumptions rather than lives‖ (293, 292). Even the photograph of Toby, which Nick kisses, was taken during a play in Oxford, which not only indicates Toby‘s ―play-acting,‖ but also the ―performed‖ beauty of the image, a fantasy like the photograph itself: ―His face was . . . over-beautiful‖ (493). Nick elaborates on his own play-acting concerning his homosexual experiences: ―His confessed but entirely imaginary seductions took on – partly through the special effort required to invent them and repeat them consistently – the quality of real memories‖ (26). According to Nick, play-acting creates an identity that needs consistent repetition in order for idealized notions to become real, but these
―realities‖ do not hide a deeper, truer level of reality, as acting may imply. The performed
64 In every sexual activity in which Wani takes part, cocaine is used, establishing a link between the upper class and homosexuality. Hence the loss of cocaine and homosexuality leaves Wani virtually ―identity-less.‖ 65 This motorcyclist embodies the Chopin-like ―freedom,‖ which Nick never felt but desired to experience (521). This freedom is a status lacking all conservative upper class values as well as the possibility to do anything, and in this manner resembles ―dissident‖ homosexuality. De Poorter 76
―reality‖ is perceived as real by the character, in which otherness is affirmed but excluded through play-acting.
In this aspect lies AIDS greatest disruptive force, as it interrupts and exposes the character‘s play-acting, and as a result his or her notion of a fixed identity. Wani fades due to his seropositivity, as does Nick, since their play-acting is revealed by AIDS. The exposure of the other within the self is unbearable, and hence they have no choice but to fade away. The
Feddens have to expel Nick from their surroundings, in order to protect their own play-acting and identities, already partly deconstructed by the novel‘s irony. Leo‘s mother similarly has to disavow the true cause of his seropositivity in order to continue pretending and play-acting, believing that her son is ―no sinner‖ (408). Despite the prejudiced view of AIDS/HIV in the novel, even though irony might have undermined this specific depiction, AIDS exposes the normative mechanism in the upper class as well as deconstructs identities, perceived as fixed and stable.
The disruption and exposure of identity by AIDS creates a situation in which a different identity becomes untenable, precisely because of the depiction of AIDS in the novel. Due to the solitary attribute of AIDS, as well as its equation with death, the PWA cannot count on a community or circle of friends to constitute an identity, the reason why Prior was saved from
―death‖ in Angels in America. Since Wani and Nick cannot accept the disruptive mechanism of AIDS in their lives, they both cannot acknowledge the presence of the other within them nor its decisive role in the creation of identity, they have no other choice but to give up their identity in its totality. Death is thus, ironically, the inescapable outcome of AIDS in this novel, as long as Wani and Nick are not able to recognise that identity is always constructed within a specific society. De Poorter 77
6. Conclusion
Both Angels in America and The Line of Beauty represent AIDS in the eighties, in an irresponsible world. It is not surprising that these two works of art, looking back on a situation during which governments were perceived as ―criminally neglect[ful],‖ deal with responsibility and agency (Yingling 295). PWAs and their friends are represented as the sole responsible (human) beings in a society which desperately tries to ignore their presence, as well as the presence of AIDS and HIV. In their attempts to act responsibly, then, the characters in both the play and the novel are represented as dependent on each other. In
Angels in America, Belize, Hannah, Louis, and Prior are responsible because they take care of each other and acknowledge that they are constituted by the others. The final scene in the play depicts the four friends as complementing each others‘ identities and each others‘ words.
Responsibility, on the other hand, in The Line of Beauty is based on exclusion; Nick and Wani ultimately depend on each other because they have nobody else to depend on, except for Wani who still has his family, even though he has to conceal his homosexuality in their presence.
This situation is echoed in the relationship between Leo, Nick‘s former lover, and his partner
Bradley, who ―had been there‖ for Leo during his ―illness‖ (Hollinghurst 401).
Despite those acts of responsibility, Nick (and Bradley) are left behind in an isolating and solitary situation. Wani, not surprisingly, is finally also alone at Nat‘s wedding, and even
Leo is depicted as isolated, as he went ―blind‖ (Hollinghurst 405). The trope of isolation is ultimately more closely connected to the ―post-epidemic‖ period after the eighties than the eighties itself, as Crimp demonstrates in his discussion of the disappearance of AIDS activists groups in the nineties. Angels in America’s representation the AIDS experience differs completely because it is still invested in the discourses of AIDS activist groups. AIDS in this activist discourse is a communal experience, affecting everyone, not just a selected De Poorter 78 community in society. These communities affect the identity construction of PWAs, whereas
Nick and Wani (and Roy to a certain extent in Angels in America) are stuck within a supposedly fixed identity, which is deconstructed by AIDS, and hence lose all sense of self and identity.
A final dissonance between these two texts is the activism inspired by the communal experience of AIDS. Through this shared experience, PWAs and their friends have the strength to carry on fighting the prejudices directed against them, a notion clearly present in
Angels in America (the ―Great Work‖ [Perestroika 99]). Taking action is a vital part of Prior‘s message in the epilogue in Perestroika, even if there is no theory behind that action. Hannah argues in the epilogue that it is ―the going into [the world] that makes the idea [of the world]‖
(Perestroika 98). Activism, however, is absent from The Line of Beauty, since AIDS has already taken on the image of a permanent disaster, intrinsic to the modern world. There is no need for activism in the novel‘s society, since the crisis is perceived as detained and under control, thus valuing some lives as more important than others, or rather ―heterosexual‖ lives as more important than ―homosexual‖ lives.
Irrespective of the different ways in which AIDS is represented in these two works of art, one process connected to AIDS is present in both novels: disrupting and exposing identity. AIDS in both texts helps deconstruct the human/inhuman distinction, undermining the normative process of the regulatory ideal. Angels in America destabilises the regulatory ideal by ―rehumanising‖ PWAs and obstructing the dehumanisation process. In The Line of
Beauty dehumanisation is equally impeded, but the rehumanisation process is not completely performed, since Nick and Wani both inhabit a liminal space in between human and inhuman once they discover they are seropositive. This liminal space, however, equally disrupts the De Poorter 79 regulatory ideal, since it constitutes the border in between humanity nor inhumanity, thus opposing any specific label.
The other binarism disrupted in these two fictional texts is the self/other twofold. AIDS in Angels in America allows for a deconstruction of the twofold, because it not only shows the presence of the other in the self, but it also demonstrates the processes through which self and other are both constituted through each other. Ultimately, AIDS reveals the fact that self and other are constructions in dominant discourses by indicating that a dominant self is a fallacy and all selves are essentially others. The mechanism of AIDS in The Line of Beauty is slightly different since it exposes that the self is constructed by expelling the other, proving the fragility of the notion ―self.‖ When AIDS then uncovers the otherness within the self, the self is no longer tenable and completely disrupted.
The final aspect uncovered by AIDS in the two literary texts is the construction of identity. AIDS demonstrates in both novels the performative actions that lie at the basis of any identity. The exposure of the performative mechanism is the greatest disruptive effect of
AIDS, as it lays bare how supposedly essential characteristics of identity are still constructed through reiteration. By exposing the workings of identity, AIDS demonstrates in Angels in
America and The Line of Beauty that differentiating between people on the basis of self- identification is an exercise in futility, and an attempt to reinstate the regulatory ideals which
AIDS has already disrupted. By indicating that both the supposedly dominant identities of people who do adhere to the regulatory ideal and the allegedly subordinate and subversive identities of people who do not follow its example are equally constructed within normative processes, AIDS questions the discrimination between these two sets of people. Despite and De Poorter 80 due to the fact that many use AIDS to discriminate against and categorise people, AIDS has the potential to disrupt identity and disarm discrimination and prejudice.
De Poorter 81
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