Since the Second World War, a normative citizenship pivoting around the white, middle-class, heteronormative family has developed in America. Those whose lifestyles fall outside of social norms are conceived as deviants to American society. While the white, middle-class, familial structure of wives as housekeepers and husbands as breadwinners is acknowledged as mainstream, legitimate, and desirable, the lifestyles of homeless women, childless couples, hybrid women, lesbians, and gays are stigmatized as marginalized, morbid, shameful, and mad. Madness thereby becomes a power mechanism centered on identity performance and family structure. Confronted with mainstream discourse’s denigration and oppression of the nonconformists, playwrights attempt to interrogate the postwar discourse of madness in America through dramatic portrayal of nonconformist characters in nonstereotyped and disruptive ways. Drawing upon Lauren Berlant’s and other theorists’ conceptualization of affect as a transpersonal capacity that transgresses the existing power relations and identity structures, this thesis examines American playwrights’ dramatization of affective performance and power negotiation in five dramas of madness. Through analyzing the following plays, Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1962), Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964), Paula Vogel’s And Baby Make Seven (1982), and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (1991), this thesis proposes that postwar American theatre of madness creates an affective sphere alternative to that of mainstream culture. According to Berlant’s study, American mainstream culture provides an intimate public sphere of affect for individuals to attach their feelings and lifestyles to a national sense of belonging and citizenship. This thesis argues that postwar American drama of madness creates an alternative affective space to present nonconformist characters’ struggle within and negotiation with the dominant structure of power and identity.

This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on female desire and gender performance in Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. In postwar America, to deal with the national crisis of veteran re-accommodation and manhood rehabilitation, women were propagated by government and media to shift from being wartime workers to conventional wives and mothers. Performing conventional femininity thereby, to a large degree, became the sole way for women to gain citizenship. Streetcar addresses the existential predicament of a working-class housewife, Stella Kowalski, and the madness of a single, penniless, middle-aged Southern belle, Blanche DuBois. While Stella has to stand her husband’s domestic violence for material protection and sexual fulfillment, Blanche performances double femininities of ideal belle and femme fatale so as to earn herself protection and shelter. During her doubled gender performances, Blanche undergoes intensive feelings of anxiety and fear as her excessive sexuality and manipulative femininity are conceived as threats to the stability of American family and society. As her complex femininity is condemned by Stanley and the male-dominated society to the status of a mad prostitute, Blanche adopts identity imagination—envisioning herself as an elegant belle rescued by a gentleman instead of a degraded woman taken away by a doctor to asylum—as a strategy to resist mainstream society’s denigration of female desire, although she could not escape the tragedy of being defined and confined as a mad woman.

Chapter 2 examines multiple masculinities and power games in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. In the conservative fifties, a hegemonic paternalistic masculinity around man’s role as a successful breadwinner and an authoritative father was constructed. In Woolf, Albee concentrates on the dark power games played by his characters embodying different forms of masculinities, including George’s bookish masculinity, Martha’s female masculinity, and Nick’s ideal masculinity. Given that the games’ engagement with insult, violence, seduction, and fantasy poses a serious challenge to middle-class morality, the characters tend to be condemned by critics as “morbid” and insane. This chapter argues that the dark power games indeed provide the characters with an alternative space to parody and subvert the conventional gender role and power structure in white, middle-class family. In those games, such gendered attributes as physical strength, career ambition, sexual prowess, or wit and intelligence are simply demonstrations of their identity and their attempts at ascendancy. In particular, Albee foregrounds the affective energy involved in these performative negotiations, highlighting the role that improvised affect—public humiliation, righteous fury, and intimidation—play in putting power on display. Power positions are thereby taken, relinquished and subverted. Through power games, Albee reveals the performance of masculinity and femininity and the fluidity of gender positions.

Chapter 3 probes into Kennedy’s presentation of black women’s identity and madness in Funnyhouse of A Negro. In the turbulent sixties of Civil Rights movement and Black Power movement, a racial confrontation between white hatred for the black people and black pride of their ethnicity permeated American society. While scholarship tends to regard Sarah’s madness—the fragmentation of her selfhood into four figures—as Kennedy’s criticism on racial binarism, this chapter explores Sarah’s split selves as manifestations of black woman’s complex affects and critical reflections on whiteness and blackness on stage. In Funnyhouse, Sarah imagines herself as four influential characters of black and white, male and female: Queen Victoria, Duchess of Hapsburg, Patrice Lumumba, and Jesus. This imagination manifests Sarah’s aspiration for beauty, nobility and power epitomized by white aristocratic women and her admiration for back liberation movement led by black men. Nevertheless, Sarah’s identity as a mixed-race woman makes her subordinated in both white and black community. Sarah deforms the visualized embodiment of influential figures to interrogate the racial and gender structure in America. Through the disruptive black performances, Kennedy presents Victoria’s and Hapsburg’s whiteness as hybrid and frightening, Sarah’s and Lumumba’s blackness as injured and tormented, and Jesus’s Christianity as racist and vicious. Kennedy’s black performance of deformation subverts the power discourse of racial binarism, white supremacy, and male dominance in American society.

Chapter 4 attends to lesbian identity and gaiety politics in Vogel’s And Baby Make Seven. In the Reagan era, the traditional family structure and gender/sexual roles were recuperated as essential measures to save American society from moral decay, purportedly caused by nonconformists and their liberal movements. In Baby, Vogel represents a queer home to unsettle the affective and power structure in the conventional family. The queer home consists of two lesbian mothers, one gay father, one impending baby, and three imagined boys. The playful parenthood and dynamic familial relations improvised by three queer characters challenge the power hierarchy of solemn and authoritative fatherhood in the conventional family. The two lesbian characters’ campy enactment of boyishness with their female bodies subverts the binary assumption of masculinity as authentic and superior and the femininity and boyhood as immature and secondary. Besides, Vogel also makes a burlesque of classical mad scenes in drama, deconstructing the authoritative representation of madness as tragic and exploring the creative and redemptive potential of a fictional world, such as role playing and parodic performance.

Chapter 5 deals with issues of national catastrophe and affective community in Kushner’s Angels in America. In the 1980s, as the AIDS epidemic became rampant in gay communities, an intensive discrimination against gay men as “abnormal,” “diseased,” and “dangerous” permeated in mainstream America. Until 1987, the Reagan administration begun to address the topic and rendered a major policy concerning AIDS control. In Angels in America, Kushner challenges Reagan era’s homophobia, conservatism and progressivism. Performing the “madness” of Harper and Prior as manifestation of their suffering and loneliness neglected by mainstream discourse, Kushner interrogates the national myth of progress as a cruel fantasy upheld and practiced by the privileged white, middle/upper-class, heterosexual men. The national catastrophe in Reagan era is not AIDS epidemic, but rather the political discrimination and indifference against tormented groups. Kushner further affirms the potential that nonconformists’ affects, such as fear, hope, kindness, and forgiveness, possess in initiating multicultural political groups and inclusive spaces of belonging.

In postwar America, madness is concentrated as a kernel theme of dramatic representation. In representing madness, American playwrights foreground the nonconformists, who are marginalized and subordinated in mainstream culture, as central subjects of discussion and exploration. The modern and contemporary plays of madness in particular address nonconformist characters’ wrestling with mainstream discourse, highlighting their feelings and sufferings, and emphasizing these affects’ disruptive effect and the characters’ negotiation with it. This thesis argues that postwar American drama of madness initiates an alternative affective sphere to explore, present and affirm nonconformists’ existence in American society. In this theatrical space, these playwrights not only uncover the way that affects participate in the national construction of power hierarchy, but more importantly, acknowledge the role that nonconventional affects and desires play in interrogating national fantasy of homogenous identity and constructing diversified modes of being and living. In performing characters’ affective struggles, identity negotiations, and power reconstructions, the postwar American drama of madness not merely subverts mainstream discourse’s denigration, confinement and silencing of nonconformist characters, but also represents a more multifaceted picture of American society beyond mainstream narrative of middle-class monolith. A more dynamic space of belonging and power relations is also constructed as a potential part of American society and culture.

第二次世界大戰之後，美國社會建構了一個以白人、中產、異性戀家庭為基點的常規公民身份，在此常規範疇之外的群體多被認為是美國社會的異端。因此之故，圍繞白人中產家庭結構建立起來的身份、情感和權力體系——女性作為家庭主婦，男性作為經濟支柱——被認為是主流、合規、令人向往。其他群體的存在方式，例如無家可歸的女性、丁克夫妻、混血女性、女同性戀和男同性戀，則被排斥為邊緣、病態、可卑，並被冠以瘋癲之名。瘋癲由此成為圍繞身份表演和家庭結構展開的權力話語體系。面對主流話語對異端群體的鄙視和擠壓，美國劇作家聚焦和呈現瘋癲人物的心理掙紮、情感經歷和身份協商，試圖對瘋癲進行祛魅。本論文基於勞倫·貝蘭特和其他理論家的情動研究，將情動視為流動於人與人之間、具有打破現有權力關系和身份結構的生命之力，重點探討五部美國二戰後戲劇中的情動書寫和權力重構。通過分析與研究田納西·威廉斯的《欲望號街車》（1947）、愛德華·阿爾比的《誰害怕弗吉尼亞·伍爾夫？》（1962）、安德裏安·肯尼迪的《黑人開心屋》（1964）、寶拉·沃格的《七個孩子》（1984）和托尼·庫什納的《天使在美國》（1991），本論文提出，美國現當代戲劇建構了一個不同於主流文化的情感空間。根據貝蘭特理論，美國主流文化為個體的主流身份認同提供了一個核心的情動場域；本研究則發現，美國現當代戲劇作家通過瘋癲敘事，致力於呈現邊緣人物在主流話語中的掙紮以及與之進行的身份和權力協商，創建出一個別樣的情動空間。

本論文由五個主要章節構成。第一章聚焦於威廉斯《欲望號街車》中的女性欲望和性別表演。在二戰後的美國，為解決大批退伍軍人的社會安置問題和男性氣質危機，政府和媒體呼籲女性放棄戰時工作，釋放工作崗位，承擔傳統性別角色。體現傳統女性氣質由此成為女性獲取公民身份的重要途徑。在《街車》中，威廉斯探討了工人階級家庭主婦的生存困境和沒落中年南方淑女的瘋癲。為了獲取物質保障和欲望滿足，斯黛拉不得不忍受其丈夫的家庭暴力；生活在婚姻之外的布蘭奇，則不得不表演雙重女性氣質——理想淑女和致命女人——來獲得男性保護，維系基本生存。由於布蘭奇所展現的性欲望和控製欲被認為是對美國家庭和社會穩定的一大威脅，在其性別表演的過程中，她時常被焦慮和恐懼所折磨。當布蘭奇因其復雜女性氣質被以斯坦利為代表的男權社會誣蔑為瘋癲的蕩婦時，盡管最終難逃被禁錮的悲劇命運，布蘭奇通過身份幻想——將自己想象為被紳士所救的優雅淑女，而非被精神病院醫生所帶走的失常女性——試圖拒絕男權社會對女性的汙名化。

第二章圍繞阿爾比《誰害怕弗吉尼亞·伍爾夫？》中的多樣男性氣質和權力博弈展開。在保守的五十年代，家庭型男性氣質成為主導，男性的理想身份是負擔家庭生計的丈夫和享有權威的父親。在《誰害怕》中，阿爾比重點呈現了三種不同的男性氣質——喬治的中年書迂氣質、瑪莎的女性男子氣質和尼克的虛偽理想氣質——之間的黑暗權力遊戲。由於該權力遊戲涉及不符合中產階級道德的場景，例如辱罵、暴力、引誘、幻想，三個人物常被界定為「變態」和「瘋癲」。本章指出，該戲劇人物之間的權力遊戲本質是對美國中產家庭傳統性別角色和權力結構的戲仿和顛覆。在此權力博弈之中，這些人物表演出不同的性別特質，例如身體力量、事業雄心、性能力、聰明與才智，來捍衛自己的身份權威。阿爾比著重探討了即興情感表演，例如當眾侮辱、正當的憤怒和恐懼在權力協商中的作用。在喬治、瑪莎和尼克的博弈之中，權力位置被不斷的占有、讓渡和顛覆。阿爾比的黑色權力遊戲由此揭示了男性氣質和女性氣質的表演性規則以及性別權力的流動性關系。

第三章重點分析了肯尼迪在《黑人開心屋》中對黑人女性身份和瘋癲的探討。在民權運動和黑人民權運動如火如荼展開的六十年代，白人的仇黑情緒和黑人的種族驕傲之間的嚴重對立在美國彌漫開來。學術界傾向於將《開心屋》中混血女孩薩拉的「瘋癲」——她的自我分裂傾向——解讀為肯尼迪對種族二元對立的批判，而本章重點探討並批判性反思薩拉的多重自我想象如何展現黑人女性與白人族群和黑人族群之間的復雜情感。薩拉將自己想象為四位影響巨大的歷史人物——維多利亞女王，哈布斯堡公爵夫人，盧蒙巴和基督。此四位有白人和黑人，有男性和女性。其想象反映了她對白人貴族女性所代表的美麗、尊貴和權力的渴望，以及她對黑人男性主導的民族解放運動的向往。然而，薩拉的混血身份和女性身份使她在白人和黑人族群中都處於低下地位。她對典型人物的變形性重構體現了她對美國種族和性別結構的質問。通過黑人面具式的表演，薩拉的白人/女性自我，維多利亞女王和哈布斯堡公爵夫人，被呈現為雜糅的和恐怖的，薩拉的黑人/男性自我，盧蒙巴被呈現為受傷的和痛苦的，基督被呈現為駝背的和邪惡的。該戲劇的變形性黑人表演顛覆了美國社會的種族對立、白人至上以及男性主導的權力話語體系。

第四章重點探討了沃格《七個孩子》中的女同性戀身份和歡樂政治。在裏根時代，恢復傳統的家庭結構和性別角色被認為是重建美國道德秩序的關鍵。在《孩子》中，沃格建構了一個酷兒家庭來質詢傳統家庭中的情感和權力結構。這個酷兒家庭包括兩個同性戀母親、一個同性戀父親、一個即將出生的寶寶和三個想象中的男孩。三個酷兒人物實踐的嬉戲式家長模式和動態權力關系打破了傳統家庭中的權威型父權體系。兩個女同性戀人物戲仿式的男孩角色扮演顛覆了二元對立的性別偏見：男性氣質之真實性和權威性，女性氣質和男孩氣質之不成熟性和從屬性。除此之外，劇中人物還對一系列的經典瘋癲戲劇場景進行喜劇式再現，探究虛構世界，例如角色扮演和戲仿表演的創造性和顛覆性，由此解構了瘋癲話語的權威性和悲劇性。

第五章研究了庫什納《天使在美國》中的國家災難書寫和情感共同體建構。二十世紀八十年代，艾滋病在男同性戀群體中肆虐，一股恐同情緒在美國主流社會彌漫開來，男同性戀的身體被汙蔑為異常的、病態的、危險的。直到1987年，美國政府才出臺相關政策，開始公開討論與艾滋病相關的話題。在《天使》中，庫什納通過一系列的同性戀和女性幻想曲來質詢裏根時代的恐同情緒、保守主義和進步主義。哈珀和布萊爾的幻境被用來呈現他們在主流話語中無法表達的痛苦和孤獨。庫什納的孤獨者幻想曲打破了美國八十年代的進步神話和災難話語：美國所謂的進步實際上是建立在白人、中高產、異性戀群體特權之上的國家想象；美國八十時代的國家性災難不是艾滋病，而是政府對邊緣群體的冷漠和歧視。此外，庫什納還探討了邊緣人物的情感，例如恐懼、希望、仁慈、寬恕，在建構多元性政治群體和包容性社會歸屬方面的作用。

在二戰之後，瘋癲成為美國戲劇書寫的核心議題之一。通過瘋癲書寫，美國劇作家們將美國社會處於邊緣地位和從屬狀態的群體安置於戲劇探討和舞臺表演的中心，致力於展現邊緣人物與主流權力話語的糾纏，以及這些人物在糾纏過程中所經歷的情動與掙紮，所展開的質詢與協商。本論文認為，美國二戰後的瘋癲書寫為探究、呈現和肯定邊緣人物在美國社會中的存在提供了一個別樣的「情動空間」。在這一空間之中，劇作家不僅揭示了情動在主流權力話語建構中的運作機製，而且探究了非主流的欲望、情感和想象在質詢單一身份認同和建構多樣生存方式中的積極作用。通過聚焦邊緣人物在主流話語中的情感掙紮、身份協商和權力重構，二戰後美國戲劇中的瘋癲書寫不僅打破了主流話語對邊緣群體的汙蔑、禁錮和噤聲，更是呈現了一個有別於主流中產階級敘事的復雜社會圖景，展望了一個更為動態的身份、權力和文化空間。