ACT UP, Racism, and the Question of How To Use History

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9239052
AutoresDeborah B Gould (North-West State Technical University, autor correspondente)
Ano2012
Volume98
Fascículo1
Páginas54-62
Data de publicação2012-02-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoQuarterly Journal of Speech (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0033-5630 • E-ISSN: 1479-5779
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00335630.2011.638661
OpenAlexW2080962693
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Thank you to Jeff Edwards, Joey Mogul, Laurie Palmer, and Brett Stockdill for their critical comments on this piece Notes 1. My reflections here are about ACT UP during its heyday, from 1987 through the mid-1990s. A few ACT UP chapters still exist and do vital work, but I think the claim about racism refers to ACT UP during its heyday. 2. For a similar contrast between moralistic and political approaches, see Wendy Brown, States of Injury (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 3. Robert Vazquez-Pacheco, “Interview conducted by ACT UP Oral History Project,” 2002: http://www.actuporalhistory.org. 4. Catherine Saalfield and Ray Navarro, “Shocking Pink Praxis: Race and Gender on the ACT UP Frontlines,” Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. Diana Fuss (New York: Routledge, 1991), 353. 5. ACT UP/NY Majority Actions Committee. “Memo to ACT UP; Issue: Cultural Sensitivity and Communication,” 1990. Primary Source Microfilm, Gay Rights Movement—Series 3: ACT UP: The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, reel 6, box 8, folder 5. Produced by Gale CENGAGE Learning. 6. Having explored ACT UP's conflicts in detail elsewhere, I am relatively concise here. See Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP's Fight Against AIDS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 7. The lore is that getting “drugs into bodies” was ACT UP/NY's original mission, but the evidence indicates otherwise. See, for example, Mark Harrington, “Some Transitions in the History of AIDS Treatment Activism: From Therapeutic Utopianism to Pragmatic Praxis,” Acting on AIDS: Sex, Drugs, and Politics, ed. Joshua Oppenheimer and Helena Reckitt (London: Serpent's Tail, 1997), 275. 8. Jeffrey Edwards, “AIDS, Race, and the Rise and Decline of a Militant Oppositional Lesbian and Gay Politics in the US,” New Political Science 22 (2000): 495. 9. Kendall Thomas, Interview conducted by Deborah Gould (New York, September 11, 2002), personal ACT UP archive. 10. Thomas, Interview. 11. Again, the evidence counters this idea that ACT UP's original mission was solely to get “drugs into bodies;” still, many saw it that way and consequently felt ACT UP was veering. For elaboration, see Gould, Moving Politics, 351–53. 12. David Barr, Interview conducted by Deborah Gould (New York, September 11, 2002), personal ACT UP archive. 13. Tim Miller, Interview conducted by Deborah Gould (San Francisco, July 13, 1999), personal ACT UP archive. 14. Barr, Interview. 15. ACT UP/NY Women and AIDS Book Group, Women, AIDS, and Activism (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990). 16. Quoted in Celia Farber, “AIDS: Words From the Front,” Spin (October 1990), 73–75. 17. A more recent activist practice of establishing “ground rules” for discussion—including speaking in “I” statements and acknowledging that everyone makes mistakes—seems attuned to, and an effort to alleviate, such anxieties. Additional informationNotes on contributorsDeborah B. GouldDeborah B. Gould was involved in ACT UP for many years as well as the Chicago activist group, Queer to the Left, and is a founding member of the art/activism/research collaborative group, Feel Tank Chicago. She is an Associate Professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP's Fight Against AIDS was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2009. Parts of this essay draw from material published in Moving Politics

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