Ruminations on the AIDS crisis
Both anthologies combine highly theoretical articles with more
direct and personal reflections by PWAs and AIDS activists
BY
ED
S C H I F F E R
Andrea Dworkin. Simon Watney’s ‘The
Spectacle of AIDS” covers similar ground as
AIDS: Cultural AnaJysis/Cultural Activism.
it situates the presentation of the male
Edited by Douglas Crimp. MTT Press, 1988.
homosexual body ravaged by AIDS in a larger
$10.95.
campaign to promote “family values.”
Watney, a film critic who is also an
Taking Liberties: AIDS and Cultural Politics.
administrator for Britain’s oldest AIDS
Edited by Simon Watney. Serpent's Tail, 1989.
service organization, has emerged as a
$13.95.
preeminent voice in the cultural analysis of
the epidemic. His groundbreaking book.
s the last international AIDS conference
Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS, and the
made clear, the epidemic is more than a
Media (University of Minnesota Press, 1987),
medical event. Sadly, it has become the
was among the first to show how the societal
occasion for much speculation about late 20th response to AIDS was part of a larger
century society. Two recent and somewhat
conservative assault on freedom, sexual and
overlapping anthologies suggest that the
otherwise. With compelling, eloquent rage,
greatest health crisis in recent history exposes
Watney continues this line of analysis in the
much in our culture that was already far from
introductory essay to Taking Liberties: AIDS
healthy.
and Cultural Politics.
Edited by Watney and Erica Carter, this
collection grew out of a conference at
England’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, and
it complements the October volume offering a
primarily British perspective. Carter explains
how British artists, tired of an apolitical
In his introduction to AIDS: Cultural
postmodernism, have rallied around the issue
Analysis!Cultural Activism, editor Douglas
of AIDS, and Keith Alcorn offers a
Crimp confronts the long prevalent
comprehensive critique of the BBC’s self-
assumption that the scientific explanation and
congratulatory “AIDS Television Week.”
management of AIDS can be taken for
Some might suggest that the cultural critics
granted and that therefore “cultural producers
themselves are a tad too self-congratulatory,
can respond to the epidemic in only two ways:
but it is to the editors’ credit that many of the
essays in Taking Liberties seem to be in
by raising money for scientific research and
dialogue
with one another. Cindy Patton’s
service organizations or by creating works
scathing indictment of a newly constituted
that express the human suffering and loss.“
“AIDS Industry” in which women and gay
The volume that follows (which began as
men assume their traditional roles as
an issue of the art journal October) is not a
caregivers while straight men cast themselves
collection of artists’ personal musings, but a
as “experts” is answered by Jan Zita Grover’s
tough-minded series of reflections on the
warnings against a dangerous “nostalgia” for
AIDS crisis. Jan Zita Grover’s “AIDS:
the early days of the crisis.
Keywords” offers a glossary of terms (such as
An equally impressive accomplishment of
“victim”) that prove to be symptomatic of
both the English and American anthologies is
rampant misunderstanding. Paula A.
that both combine highly theoretical articles
Treichler, an historian of medicine, shows in
with more direct and personal reflections by
her essay on “biomedical discourse” that there
PWAs and AIDS activists. Occasionally the
has been an “epidemic of signification” in the
two perspectives merge, as in Meurig
scientific literature on AIDS that researchers
Horton’s “Bugs, Drugs and Placebos” (in
have sought to contain by clinging to a single
Taking Liberties), which details the
virus hypothesis that might not be warranted.
contradictions in the assumptions behind drug
And Sander L. Gilman approaches medical
trials in the context of his own search for
history from a different angle to show how
treatment. Indeed, the most profound
much the iconography of AIDS recalls 19th
intellectual
consequence of AIDS may lie in a
century depictions of syphilis.
rethinking of the relationship of social theory
The collection’s most trenchant essays,
to social practice. As difficult and jargon
however, go well beyond the “facts” of the
laden as some of the essays in these
epidemic. Leo Bersani’s “Is the Rectum a
anthologies may be, they manage to convince
Grave?” is a far-ranging meditation on sexual
us that it is a matter of life and death how we
politics that relates modem discomfort with
choose to theorize about the AIDS crisis and
male homosexuality to the speculations of
its continuing causes.
V
feminists like Catherine MacKinnon and
Phoenix R ising
P resents
A
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