When the medical phenomenon that was eventually to be called "AIDS" first entered into public discourse in 1981, the gay male population most visibly affected had already been configured for a decade by Christian fundamentalists as apocalyptic signifiers or signs of the "end times." This apocalyptic discourse grew out of a dense centuries-old American apocalypticism, which included images of crisis, warfare, catastrophic destruction, the demonic Antichrist, and ultimate triumph and resurrection.
With the discovery of a strange acquired immune illness among gay men, as well as other marginal groups affected, the religious right employed a full range of apocalyptic signifiers to stigmatize the phenomenon and further demonize those immediately affected by it. In turn, HIV/AIDS affected/infected communities appropriated this American apocalyptic discourse in order to resist its marginalizing stigma and employ its mobilizing effects. However, the ideological constructs of Western apocalypticism--rigid binary oppositions and sexual anxieties registered around those oppositions--seem counterproductive to those communities that are attempting to resist the binarisms and sexual anxieties of the dominant culture. Thus while apocalyptic discourse is tactically effective in mobilizing action, it is of questionable strategic value. Like discourse itself, apocalyptic tropes are contingent and outlive their usefulness when societies reify them as hypostatic states or literal representations. To use Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress' terms, such tropes perform valuable work along a "semiosic plane" but their claims along a "mimetic plane" are dubious.
While some attention has previously been paid to AIDS and apocalyptic language, no other study has been grounded in an understanding of unique American apocalypticisms and the material conditions in which those tropes are produced. Moreover, few studies have attempted an analysis of quite as broad a discursive range, including printed texts, journalism, biomedical discourse, archival materials, visual arts, dance, video, and film, among others. The social focus of the study is New York City. This study examines issues related to five salient apocalyptic tropes: exile; prophetic utterance of the jeremiad; demons and pariahs; Armageddon; angels and paradisal bliss.
Chapter One, "Introduction," documents the demonizing rhetoric of the Religious Right during the 1970s and early 1980s as it was directed against the emerging Gay Liberation movement. In addition, the chapter surveys counter-stigmatizing apocalyptic representations of AIDS, proposes a social semiotic critical analysis (informed by the theoretical work of Pierre Bourdieu, Robert Hodge, and Gunther Kress), and traces an American apocalyptic tradition from the time of the Colonial period and the Early Republic. In this chapter, I position the study as a conversation partner with Richard Dellamora's Apocalyptic Overtures: Sexual Politics and the Sense of an Ending.
Chapter Two, "Exile of the Queer Evangelist," explores issues of performance, performativity, and physical space, focusing on the performance work of Tim Miller in My Queer Body, David Drake in The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, and of James McCourt's homage to drag performance in his novel, Time Remaining. This chapter suggests that while apocalypticism posits a specific end to history, it must constantly be ritualized or performed in order to produce its mobilizing effects. In this regard, "apocalypse" is homologous with "identity," a continuous performance known only in its effects.
Chapter Three, "Larry Kramer and the American Jeremiad," examines Kramer's writing and activism. In particular, Kramer's plays, essays, and speeches all share the jeremiad's construction of a sense of crisis and the tendency to demonize "enemies." This chapter relies on the literary historical work of Sacvan Berkovitch in the area of Puritan and Colonial American discourse. While Kramer has made an indispensable contribution to the improvement of AIDS research and service, and his early interventions were invaluable, his obsessive use of a narrow discursive habitus has rendered him less effective as the politics of AIDS changed in the early 1990s.
Chapter Four, "Glory of the Pariah," discusses demonizing language as used both by Christian fundamentalists and HIV/AIDS activists, affected artists, and other culture workers. Of particular interest are tropes of defilement. Moreover, many sexual dissidents have embraced the role of social deviant or pariah as a means of composing an identity. Paradoxically, their dissent is consistent with various forms of Reformation and early American antinomianism. This chapter looks at performances, written texts, and visual work by Diamanda Galas, Samuel R. Delany, David Wojnarowicz, various alternative 'zines like Diseased Pariah News and Infected Faggot Perspectives, Todd Haynes' film Poison, and others. The chapter employs critical analytical tools derived from Mary Douglas, Julia Kristeva, and Georges Bataille, as well as Pierre Bourdieu and Samuel R. Delany on discourse. This chapter suggests that American erotic discourse is impoverished by a series of binary oppositions. The cultural work performed by the artists or culture workers examined in this chapter has been to construct a language of the erotic that resists these binary oppositions. Perhaps the chiefest of these binarisms is the opposition constructed on "dominant" and "marginal" discourse, which actually are fluid and reciprocal fields. The transgressive discourses, moreover, are composed (to use a linguistic trope) as "Creolized languages," employing pieces from a variety of discursive fields in order to form a language of pastiche or collage.
Chapter Five, "American Armageddon," examines tropes of warfare related to AIDS, in particular those produced by ACT UP, Lesbian Avengers, Steed Taylor's Franklin Furnace installation, "The War Room," and Sarah Schulman (in her fiction, activism, and journalism). The chapter examines the tactical and strategic effects of martial tropes and concludes that they are deeply flawed because they tend to erase both difference and sameness, although they are often tactically effective in mobilizing action.
Chapter Six, "Malkim in American," focuses on queer notions of paradise, including sacred eros or erotic bliss, and the imagination of gay utopias, by discussing Tony Kushner's play(s) Angels in America and Douglas Sadownick's Sacred Lips of the Bronx. Many people affected by AIDS have turned to traditional figures of hope, grace, and a spiritual dimension. American utopianisms historically have been constructed from the fragments of Neoplatonism, European hermeticisms, and Jewish Kabbalah mysticism, which are explicitly present in Kushner's plays and Sadownick's novel. The chapter briefly examines precursor gay utopianisms, including the trope of Atlantis, which appears in a remarkable number of "gay" texts. Moreover, the chapter considers the dialectic between postmodern materialism and the claims of/for a "spirituality" that resists transcendentalism.
Chapter Seven, "(In)conclusion," discusses issues related to activist and classroom praxis, and urges critical reflection on notions of queer spirituality. This chapter argues on behalf of resistance to apocalyptic tropes, which circumvent decision-making and produce panic in part by the creation of crisis and of opposition categories that erase both difference and sameness. Both classroom and activist praxis must take into account the material conditions of their subjects in order to effect change. Finally, a recent proliferation of discourse on "queer" or "gay" "spirituality" (as well as that on postmodern spirituality) suggests that forms of religious discourse deserve attention for the "semiosic" work they perform and warrant careful critique for the "mimetic" claims that they make.
This study would not have been possible without the support, guidance, and encouragement of many people. The enthusiastic response of my director, Michael W. Vella, to this topic when I mentioned it in passing several years ago, began our collaboration. The other members of my committee, Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes and Patrick D. Murphy, have been invaluable for their comments and encouragement as drafts progressed. John T. Dever, my former boss and now dean of Instruction at Blue Ridge Community College (Virginia), has been both an inspiration and a guide. Clarence Hundley, my office mate and chair of the English program at Thomas Nelson Community College has likewise shown me the way through the wilderness. The division chair of Communications and Humanities, Mike Bruno, has helped me stay on task. Division secretary Ruth Frizzell has smoothed bumps along the way, as has Cathy Renwick, secretary of the graduate English program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
The monthly Gay Men's Book Group of Hampton Roads (Virginia) have been encouraging friends and alert readers, and I am grateful to Lee, Kirk, Bob, and Charles for their comments. My hosts in New York City, the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement made it possible for me to spend months and weeks in the city doing research over the past several years. Moreover, my longtime friends, Rev. James Gardiner, SA and Rev. Joe Cavoto, SA, have provided me with ideas and contacts. Laurence Pagnoni has likewise over the years been a guide and patron. Those with whom I conducted interviews generously shared their time and lives, among them Douglas Petitjean, Keith Christopher, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Steed Taylor, Tim Miller, Samuel R. Delany. Many Internet corespondents replied to my email queries to listserv groups. My best "bud" John Elliott has always encouraged me to run the race to the end.
Several research institutions have been invaluable in this study. The library of Regent University, the institution founded in Virginia Beach by televangelist Pat Robertson, was not surprisingly a trove of fundamentalist discourse on homosexuality and AIDS; and like most libraries, it was also admirably stocked with work by gay writers and postmodern critical theorists. "Know your enemy" cuts both ways. Local research libraries at Old Dominion University and the College of William and Mary provided both reference and source materials. The New York City Library has been invaluable in research for this study, in particular the Main Reading Room staff and the librarians of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs room at the Central Research Library, and the staff of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, particularly those in the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive. My greatest research debt, however, goes to the National Archive of Lesbian and Gay History, whose staff (Richard C. Wandel, archivist and Nancy D. Seaton, project archivist) and volunteers made me feel at home and supported my work in more ways than I can count.
My greatest debt, however, is to my parents, Thomas and Lucy Long, who believed in this work. I dedicate this study to them in memory of friends who have died from AIDS.