"Where you stand determines what you see": The Politics of American Multiculturalism in Kushner's Angels in America (Millennium Approaches and Perestroika)

Abstract

There are strong reasons to accept the position that multiculturalism is a complex theoretical backbone of "American-ness". In spite of the theoretical and pragmatic attempts to reduce the diverse markers of peoples' cultural identities into a general category, Americans' acceptance of their American identity(ies) is significantly defined by diverse but distinctive cultural experiences. Using the liberalist paradigm to explain American multiculturalism, therefore, the American environment has to be viewed as a cluster of cultural identities which either tolerantly or violently exclude each other. It is however interesting to note that in contrast to the essentialist, the deconstructionist model would see the American cultural realities in terms of the narratives that have served to idealise its "true" cultural homogeneity. To this model, the American identity is an imagined reality. What becomes even more disturbing, going by these conflicting views, is the complexity of choice highlighting individual's and groups' participations in the politics that entrenches multiculturalism in America. This paper examines the challenges facing Americans' acceptance of multiculturalism and the politics of "group differentiated rights" that problematises the choice or choices individuals and groups make in the process of acquiring the American identity. The paper uses Tony Kushner's Angels in America (Millennium Approaches and Perestroika) to demonstrate that Americans' desires to express multiculturalism is complicated by their participation in the politics of its acceptance and rejection simultaneously.