The afterlives of Gregory Smith
Blackness, queerness and viral insurgency
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18985252 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Che Gossett (0009-0003-3540-8786, University of Pennsylvania, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 373-387 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sexualities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1363-4607 • E-ISSN: 1461-7382 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/13634607251344482 |
| OpenAlex | W4411747236 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
This article explores the counter archive of Black queer AIDS activist Gregory Smith, and the ways in which his incarcerated AIDS activism became a means of resistance to the carceral state and premature death. Against the register of the case which follows a racial as juridical index, Smith’s own letters form a counter to the official record -- exceeding it -- as it documents his ‘agency’ only as a racialized pathos of criminality and threat to the security of the social contract and prison form. I show how Black AIDS activism confronts premature death—not as a new violence on the political scene but rather as a constitutive violence of modernity, a plantation modernity realized and actualized through the slave ship and the apparatuses of the slave fort as colonial, bio and necropolitical and carceral technologies
Art · Literature · Psychoanalysis · Queer · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Homelessness and Social Issues · Philosophy · Psychology · Sex work and related issues
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |