Precarious queers and queer precarity: cross-cultural literary responses to AIDS from David Wojnarowicz to CAConrad

不稳定的酷儿和酷儿不稳定：从大卫·沃伊纳罗维奇到 CAConrad 的跨文化文学对艾滋病的反应

• 批准号: 2882070
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2882070
• 关键词: Precarious; queers; queer; precarity; cross

This thesis re-evaluates the literary canon formed in response to the AIDS crisis. Formerly understood as 'gay male literature,' it establishes an alternative body of 'queer' AIDS-response literature which focuses on cross-cultural connections and coalitional community formation in response to prejudice and social inequality. Using Judith Butler's writings on precarity and other cultural theory to analyse AIDS literature, this thesis broadens our understanding of the diversity of people impacted by AIDS. It reclaims marginalised literary voices, contributes to theoretical debates about gay literature, and demonstrates that 'queerness' as we understand it today arose in direct response to AIDS. Gay literature of the 1980s has coalesced to form the AIDS-response canon, abandoning post-Stonewall narratives of sexual liberation and embracing tragedy as a tenet of gay identity. While tragedy serves the elegiac mission of AIDS-response narratives, the authorial impulse to commemorate a milieu often excludes depictions of lives outwith the author's own experience. As a result, the AIDS-response canon has been characterised as consolidating middle-class gay male identity while marginalising voices that originate from peripheral social positions. Gregory Woods concludes in A History of Gay Literature (1999) that the resulting canon is 'sentimental, nostalgic, and conservative' and Sarah Schulman's Let the Record Show (2021) calls for a decentralisation of the almost 'caricatural' narrowness of the history of AIDS activism in general and ACT UP in particular. Certain strands of queer theory intensify this narrowness by deriding the desire to make queerness an engine of inclusivity and social connection, in particular the work of the 'anti-relational' theorists Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman who privilege gay identity in opposition to the pluralistic potentialities of queerness - which my project will highlight instead. My thesis offers a three-part riposte to this critical and canonical orthodoxy by: recovering marginalised and forgotten AIDS-response texts that exhibit a distinctly queer emphasis upon cross-cultural community formation; establishing a critical framework for our comprehension of a queer AIDS-response through the innovative application of Judith Butler's precarity theory; demonstrating that the concept of 'queer precarity' which emerged from AIDS continues to serve as an underscoring principle in queer organising against modern manifestations of systemic violence, including the climate crisis and the military-industrial complex.

本文重新评估了为应对艾滋病危机而形成的文学经典。它以前被理解为“男同性恋文学”，它建立了一个“酷儿”艾滋病应对文学的替代体系，重点关注跨文化联系和联盟社区的形成，以应对偏见和社会不平等。本文利用朱迪思·巴特勒关于不稳定问题的著作和其他文化理论来分析艾滋病文献，拓宽了我们对受艾滋病影响的人群多样性的理解。它重新唤起了边缘化的文学声音，为有关同性恋文学的理论辩论做出了贡献，并表明我们今天所理解的“酷儿”是对艾滋病的直接反应。 20 世纪 80 年代的同性恋文学已经联合起来形成了艾滋病应对经典，放弃了后石墙时代的性解放叙事，将悲剧视为同性恋身份的信条。虽然悲剧服务于艾滋病应对叙事的挽歌使命，但作者纪念环境的冲动往往排除了对作者自身经历之外的生活的描述。因此，艾滋病应对标准的特点是巩固中产阶级男同性恋身份，同时边缘化来自边缘社会地位的声音。格雷戈里·伍兹 (Gregory Woods) 在《同性恋文学史》(1999 年) 中总结道，由此产生的经典是“感伤的、怀旧的和保守的”，而莎拉·舒尔曼 (Sarah Schulman) 的《让记录显示》(Let the Record Show) (2021 年) 则呼吁将同性恋文学历史近乎“讽刺”的狭隘性去中心化。一般的艾滋病行动主义，特别是 ACT UP。某些酷儿理论通过嘲笑让酷儿成为包容性和社会联系引擎的愿望，强化了这种狭隘性，尤其是“反关系”理论家 Leo Bersani 和 Lee Edelman 的著作，他们优先考虑同性恋身份，反对多元潜力。酷儿性——我的项目将重点强调这一点。我的论文对这种批判性和规范性的正统观念进行了三部分的反击：恢复边缘化和被遗忘的艾滋病应对文本，这些文本表现出对跨文化社区形成的明显酷儿重视；通过朱迪思·巴特勒的不稳定理论的创新应用，为我们理解酷儿艾滋病应对措施建立一个关键框架；表明从艾滋病中出现的“酷儿不稳定”概念仍然是酷儿组织反对现代系统性暴力表现形式（包括气候危机和军工联合体）的一个强调原则。