Imagine Hope: Aids and Gay Identity (Social Aspects of Aids Series)

Among the chief themes of this book are the representation of AIDS in the mass media and in the arts, and the encouragement of a wider understanding of the personal impact of AIDS and its social experience, particularly among those social groups living with the highest levels of illness, death and mourning. Offering a chronicle of the changing and often confusing course of the epidemic and the shifting responses to it, the author hopes to cast light on the obstacles faced by policy-makers contending with a crisis unprecedented, not least in relation to the most seriously affected social constituencies. Book Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Contents......Page 5 Acknowledgements......Page 12 Introduction: Epidemic! What epidemic?......Page 14 Ordinary boys......Page 40 Vito Russo: 1946 90......Page 48 School's out......Page 50 Queer epistemology: activism, 'outing' and the politics of sexual identities......Page 63 Emergent sexual identities and HIV/AIDS......Page 76 The killing fields of Europe......Page 94 Charles Barber: 1956 92......Page 100 Read my lips: AIDS, art activism......Page 102 How to have sax in an epidemic......Page 119 Hard won credibility......Page 122 Michael Callen: 1955 93......Page 127 Dr Simon Mansfield: 1960 93......Page 129 AIDS and the politics of queer diaspora......Page 130 Derek Jarman 1942 94: a political death......Page 146 Numbers and nightmares: HIV/AIDS in Britain......Page 149 Art from the pit: some reflections on monuments, memory and AIDS......Page 161 In purgatory: the work of Felix Gonzales-Torres......Page 167 Acts of memory......Page 176 Signifying AIDS: 'Global AIDS', red ribbons and other controversies......Page 182 Concorde......Page 193 AIDS awareness?......Page 196 Moving targets: some reflections on the origins and history of gay men fighting AIDS......Page 201 'Lifelike': imagining the bodies of people with AIDS......Page 205 The politics of AIDS treatment information activism......Page 212 GLF: 25 years on......Page 226 These waves of dying friends: gay men, AIDS and multiple loss......Page 229 The political significance of statistics in the AIDS crisis: epidemiology, representation and re-gaying......Page 241 Lesbian and gay studies in the age of AIDS......Page 257 Imagine hope: AIDS and gay identity......Page 272 Index......Page 288 This book chronicles the changing and often confusing course of the AIDS epidemic in its second decade and the shifting responses to it. The book also explores how gay identity has been affected by AIDS, how gay men have responded to it, how AIDS policies have been established and put into practice, and why the voluntary sector response to AIDS has been so vital Presents a chronological selection of Watney's writings from the 1990s, with new contextualising introductory and concluding essays and offers a chronicle of the changing and often confusing course of the epidemic. This book consists of a sequence of essays written about many different aspects of HIV/AIDS in the 1990s.