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If Memory Serves: Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of the Queer Past

Online ISBN:
9781452947624
Print ISBN:
9780816676101
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press
Book

If Memory Serves: Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of the Queer Past

Christopher Castiglia,
Christopher Castiglia
Full professor at Penn State
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Published online:
24 August 2015
Published in print:
1 December 2011
Online ISBN:
9781452947624
Print ISBN:
9780816676101
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press

Abstract

The AIDS epidemic soured the memory of the sexual revolution and gay liberation of the 1970s, and prominent politicians, commentators, and academics instructed gay men to forget the sexual cultures of the 1970s in order to ensure a healthy future. But without memory there can be no future, argues this exploration of the struggle over gay memory that marked the decades following the onset of AIDS. Challenging many of the assumptions behind first-wave queer theory, this book offers a new perspective on the emergence of contemporary queer culture from the suppression and repression of gay memory. Drawing on an archive of videos, films, television shows, novels, monuments, paintings, and sculptures created in the wake of the epidemic, the book reveals a resistance among critics to valuing—even recognizing—the inscription of gay memory in art, literature, popular culture, and the built environment. This book explores such topics as the unacknowledged ways in which the popular sitcom Will and Grace circulated gay subcultural references to awaken a desire for belonging among young viewers; the post-traumatic (un)rememberings of queer theory; and the generation of “ideality politics” in the art of Félix González-Torres, the film Chuck & Buck, and the independent video Video Remains.

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