“The Cyborg Parallels of “Angels in America” by Denis Flannery: Summary and Critique

◆ Technology as the plays’ engine of meaning (Bethesda Angel → “engines and instruments”)

• Flannery argues that technology undergirds Kushner’s Angels and concentrates its contradictions—“utter weight” vs. “unlimited flight.”
• Prior’s reading of the Bethesda statue makes technology the metaphor for history’s force: “they are engines and instruments of flight” (Perestroika 98).
• The Angel bridges past and futurity; her presence frames the plays’ historical unpredictability and collective imagining (Perestroika 98).

▶ Historicizing Angels: Reagan-era setting, Clinton cusp, AIDS crisis

• Both parts are already “history plays”: set in 1985–86 with a 1990 epilogue, premiered in the early 1990s (Millennium “Characters”; Perestroika passim).
• Flannery foregrounds technology as an historical force within these contexts (pp. 101–102 as presented).
• The works’ reception is shaped by late-Cold-War politics and the immediacy of AIDS as social conflict (Millennium; Perestroika).

✦ Hypertext aesthetics without “cyber-drama”

• Citing Arnold Aronson, Flannery notes audiences’ comfort with “overlapping, incongruent” media logics; Angels thinks in a hypertext spatiality while not being “cyber-tech” theatre (Aronson 1997, discussed by Flannery, pp. 102–103).
• This near-contradiction mirrors the plays’ volatile technological presence: not about gadgets, but about technological effects that structure attention and movement (Aronson 1997; Flannery).

⚙️ Three technological strata: medical, communicational, theatrical

• Flannery isolates three recurrent technologies—HIV medicine, telecommunications, stagecraft—as embedded “engines and instruments” of dramatic momentum.
• The plays emphasize effects over procedures; technology catalyzes “historical volatility” and “theatrical energy” (Flannery, pp. 102–103).
• Dysfunction matters: Chernobyl and a malfunctioning radio; the Mormon diorama that “wasn’t working right,” which Harper calls “the magic of the theatre” (Perestroika 40).

✧ Nature–tech lyricism and incalculable effects (via Homebody/Kabul)

• Flannery retrofits Kushner’s later monologue to Angels: tech is literal and lyrical, suturing networks to nebulae; the “streams of slicing, shearing, unseeable light” figure tech as natural sublime (Kushner, Homebody/Kabul 14, as cited).
• Technology embodies the incalculable: local actions with unpredictable historical consequences—central to Angels’ historiography (Flannery).

♆ Cyborg parallels I: Roy Cohn & the Angel as uncanny doubles

• Both crave stasis and the past (Roy’s McCarthyite nostalgia; the Angel’s summons to stop human motion after 1906) yet generate the plays’ most kinetic energies (Millennium 40; Perestroika 25).
• Desire density aligns them: the Angel—“Utter Flesh, / Density of Desire” (Perestroika 25); Roy—“bowel movement and blood-red meat—this is politics” (Millennium 50).
• Each seeks to extend self through another’s body (Angel→Prior; Roy→Joe), turning people into instruments (Millennium 50; Perestroika 25).

🛠️ Cyborg parallels II: Bodies + machines (Haraway/Star lens)

• Through Donna Haraway’s “Why should our bodies end at the skin?” the essay reads both figures as cyborgic fusions of human/animal/machine (Haraway 1991, 178).
• Cyborgs oscillate between grids of control and emancipatory hybridity; post-9/11 ambivalence tempers utopian claims (Haraway 1991; 1997; Flannery pp. 108–110).
• Susan Leigh Star’s emphasis on the gap between standardized tech and local bodies clarifies AIDS’ medical politics in the plays (Star 1991; Flannery 110).

🕊️ Steel wings & stage technology: the Angel as theatrical machine

• Character-list shift marks materialization: from “pale grey wings” (Millennium “Characters”) to “grey steel wings” and “Bright Steel” (Perestroika “Characters”; Perestroika 23).
• The Angel is a problem of stagecraft: “the wires show” is acceptable and the magic must still amaze; flying is hard (Millennium “A Note About Staging”; Perestroika “Flying”).
• Prior’s “Very Steven Spielberg” quip links the Angel to cinema’s technics of wonder (Millennium 90).

☎ Roy Cohn’s telecom body: phones, octopus fantasy, virtuoso control

• First image: Roy welded to a blinking phone array, “playing the phone…with virtuosity and love”; “I wish I was an octopus” (Millennium 2).
• Hospital demand reasserts the interface: “a real phone, with a hold button” (Perestroika 14); later he gets an even more elaborate phone (Perestroika 32).
• Afterlife imagery still machinic: a roaring, furnace-like scene; “I will make something up” (Perestroika 91–92).

💉 Roy’s medical cyborgianism vs. Prior’s communal care

• Roy’s corporeality becomes a network of drips, monitors, AZT; Belize: “I can make it feel like…liquid Drano” (Perestroika 11).
• Stage direction at death: “monitoring machines and IV drips galore” (Perestroika 73).
• Contrast: Prior’s hospital scenes center symptoms and chosen kin rather than apparatus, highlighting different tech–body ecologies (Perestroika, passim).

⚡ Breakdown & malfunction as historical allegory

• Flawed mediation equals catastrophe’s echo: Chernobyl + broken radio dramatize tech’s failure to contain modern disaster (Perestroika).
• Theatrical “malfunction” (the diorama) becomes meta-commentary on representation, where failed tech = fertile theatre (Perestroika 40).

♻ Orthodoxy’s allure, queered by tech and desire

• The plays do not deny the seductions of reaction (Angel’s decree; Roy’s closet power) but reframe them via cyborgic visibility and desire’s excess (Millennium 47, 86; Perestroika 25).
• Flannery: agents of stasis paradoxically energize the future the plays bless (pp. 114–115).

🌈 Coda—“Fabulous creatures”: More Life through volatile tech

• Prior’s benediction—“You are fabulous…More Life. / The Great Work Begins”—names the audience in the same register that labeled the Angel and even Roy “fabulous” (Perestroika 99; Perestroika 8; Millennium 3).
• Technology’s presence (material, cinematic, medicinal) is both risk and resource—a dramaturgy of unpredictability that enables collective futurity (Flannery, pp. 114–116).

Works cited in-text (as used by Flannery): Kushner, Millennium Approaches (Millennium); Kushner, Perestroika (Perestroika); Aronson (1997); Haraway (1991; 1997); Star (1991); Savran (1997); Kushner, Homebody/Kabul (2001).

🌸 Cyborg Theory (Donna Haraway)

• Flannery explicitly links Roy Cohn and the Angel to Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto.
• “Roy almost welded to his phone system… the Angel’s grey steel wings” embody the hybrid of human and machine (Flannery 2002/2003, p. 105–106).
• Contribution: Shows how Kushner’s drama participates in late-20th-century debates about cyborg identities, where bodies extend beyond the skin.
• Theoretically significant because it applies Haraway’s feminist technoscience to queer theatre.

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🌺 Queer Theory

• Roy’s closeted sexuality and the Angel’s ecstatic corporeality reflect queerness as unstable, excessive, and technologized.
• “LOUIS IRONSON: A word processor” conflates queer identity with machinic function (Flannery 2002/2003, p. 105).
• Contribution: Demonstrates how technology mediates queer desire and identity, disrupting fixed categories of gender, sexuality, and embodiment.

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🌼 Postmodernism & Hypertextuality

• Citing Aronson, Flannery argues that Angels in America resembles “the space of hypertext” with overlapping images and non-linear connections (Flannery 2002/2003, p. 102).
• Contribution: Positions Kushner’s dramaturgy in dialogue with postmodern narrative logics of fragmentation, simultaneity, and intertextuality.
• The play becomes a theatrical analogue to digital forms of knowledge and perception.

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🌷 Historical Materialism

• Flannery insists that Angels is always a history play, contextualized by Reaganism, AIDS, and Clinton’s political rise.
• “Technology, then, can be said to underpin some of the massive contradictions explored by Angels in America” (Flannery 2002/2003, p. 101).
• Contribution: Merges materialist attention to history with the role of technology as an active historical force.
• Shows how theatre reflects contradictions of capitalism, medicine, and politics.

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🌹 Dramaturgy & Theatricality

• Kushner foregrounds theatrical machinery: “OK if the wires show and maybe it’s good that they do” (Flannery 2002/2003, p. 112).
• Contribution: Advances theory of theatre as a site where technology itself becomes visible, refusing illusionism.
• Extends debates in performance theory about spectacle, mediation, and the politics of stage technology.

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💐 Oxymoron / Contradiction as Method

• Drawing on David Savran, Flannery highlights Kushner’s use of contradictions: progress/stasis, flesh/machine, utopia/dystopia.
• “The oxymoron becomes…the privileged figure by which the unimaginable allows itself to be imagined” (Flannery 2002/2003, p. 110).
• Contribution: Theorizes contradiction not as failure but as generative force for imagining queer futures.

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🌻 Biopolitics & Medical Technology

• AIDS is framed through IV drips, AZT, and failing medical systems. Roy’s body is technologized even in death: “monitoring machines and IV drips galore” (Flannery 2002/2003, p. 114).
• Contribution: Links Kushner to biopolitical theory by showing how standardized medical technologies misfit local queer/embodied experiences.

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🌸 Cultural Studies & Media Theory

• Spielberg allusions, cinematic spectacle, and theatrical “magic” position the play within popular media culture.
• *“Very Steven Spielberg,” Prior remarks as the Angel appears (Flannery 2002/2003, p. 112).
• Contribution: Bridges high literary theory with cultural/media studies by situating Kushner’s theatre in dialogue with cinema and mass media technology.

🌸 Overextension of Cyborg Theory

• Critics may argue Flannery stretches Haraway’s concept of the cyborg too far by calling Roy Cohn and the Angel “cyborgs.”
• The metaphor risks collapsing into over-generalization—does every technologized body or stage effect count as cyborg?

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🌺 Technological Reductionism

• Flannery foregrounds technology as a primary historical force, sometimes overshadowing AIDS, sexuality, and political critique.
• Risk: diminishing the centrality of queer identity, theology, and ethics by subsuming them under technicity.

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🌼 Neglect of Theological Dimensions

• Kushner’s Angel is deeply theological, drawing from Mormon and biblical traditions.
• Flannery’s cyborg reading may underplay this sacred dimension by treating her wings as primarily “steel” or machinic.

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🌷 Overreliance on Haraway

• Heavy dependence on Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto risks flattening Kushner’s dramaturgy into one theoretical frame.
• Critics may see this as forcing Kushner into Haraway’s paradigm rather than letting the play’s contradictions speak more pluralistically.

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🌹 Limited Engagement with Queer Affect

• While Flannery links technology and desire, he does not fully develop queer affective dimensions (shame, grief, intimacy).
• Eve Sedgwick’s framework, briefly mentioned, could have been deepened for richer queer-theoretical insight.

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💐 Stage vs. Textual Imbalance

• Flannery often discusses productions (e.g., Unity Theatre’s electric chair staging) but may conflate specific directorial choices with Kushner’s text.
• This risks overstating technology’s role when staging variations could emphasize different aspects.

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🌻 Ambiguity in Historical Materialism

• While situating the play in Reagan/Clinton eras, Flannery gives more weight to technological contradictions than to concrete political economy.
• Critics could argue that AIDS activism, race, or neoliberal policies are under-explored compared to stage technology.

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🌸 Risk of Anachronism

• By importing internet-era metaphors like “hypertext” into a play set in the 1980s, the reading may impose post-1990s frameworks retrospectively.
• The danger: blurring between historical context (Reagan-era AIDS crisis) and critical hindsight.

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🌺 Overemphasis on Spectacle

• Flannery celebrates stage machinery, glitches, and Spielbergian moments.
• Critics might argue that this fetishizes theatrical spectacle at the expense of character, dialogue, and political critique central to Kushner’s vision.