The Audacity of Hope: Locating Kushner's Political Vision in Angels in America.

Political philosophy pervades Angels in America, and its author, Tony Kushner, has never hidden the fact that he is, as a writer, unashamedly engagé. One is almost invited, therefore, to look for a political stance that the play might be said to promote. This is complicated, however, by the sheer wealth of often disparate, politically-oriented ideas and positions that Kushner weaves into his drama. In considering Kushner's political debt in Angels in America to three principal sources – thinkers of the Enlightenment, the socialism of Raymond Williams, and the messianic and apocalyptic political vision of Walter Benjamin – this article locates the main political currents of the play, identifying what is being criticized and what affirmed, in a way that reveals at least the outline of the political position the play may be said to endorse. The position that comes to light places emphasis on the fundamental value of community and is characterized by a radical adherence to hope in the face of apparent hopelessness. Such hope is meagre and indigent in comparison with other more recognisable, predominantly Christian, forms of hope. Kushner's audacious suggestion seems to be that the actual condition of possibility of the sort of hope he envisages is an experience of hopelessness born of some sort of catastrophe. In concluding, the article argues for the importance of drama as the medium of Kushner's message and offers a reflection on a possible post-9/11 revision of his politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]