Representations of gay men with HIV/AIDS across scenes of social controversy: A contribution to studies in the public sphere

Whether we are infected or affected, policymakers or activists, scientists or humanists, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) draw our attention to the human body as the arena within which struggles against the virus and the syndrome are most poignantly played out. Yet, while we never forget the material dimensions of HIV/AIDS, we must also recognize that they participate in what Paula Treichler has called "an epidemic of signification." An extraordinary proliferation of discursive and visual representations constitutes this epidemic of signification. Of most significance to this project are presentations and representations (both discursive and visual) of bodies with HIV/AIDS, more specifically gay male bodies with HIV/AIDS. Two presumptions guide my inquiry: first, presentations and representations of seropositive gay male bodies constellate subject positions and serve as models for social organization; second, social controversy about HIV/AIDS is best examined in multiple spheres and arenas. Proceeding from the insights from public sphere theorists such as Jurgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, Jane Mansbridge, and G. Thomas Goodnight, I engage in textual analysis of presentations and representations of seropositive gay men in three arenas of social controversy: the United States Congress, two radical AIDS zines--- Infected Faggot Perspectives and Diseased Pariah News, and the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). In the procedural public of the U.S. Congress, presentations and representations of seropositive gay men are variable, ranging from abstracted absent bodies, to disincorporated present bodies, to embodied absent bodies. In the textual counterpublic forum of the zines, erotic and grotesque imagery as well as a camp aesthetic prevail. Zine writers both resist and exploit the disincorporating bias of their medium to engage in corporeal writing. Between the U.S. Congress and the AIDS zines yawns a significant chasm: I argue that it is through the oscillations of ACT UP activists that arenas as disparate as Congress and the zines are brought together. I argue further that ACT UP activists' oscillations between spheres and arenas of representation rejuvenate the public sphere.