Description
Book SynopsisAlexandra Juhasz and Theodore Kerrtwo scholars deeply embedded in the HIV responsepresent the history, present, and future of AIDS through thirteen short conversations.
Trade Review“[Juhasz’s and Kerr’s] conversational model—by definition friendly, curious, and inviting, with an interest in accessibility and transparency—distinguishes [We Are Having This Conversation Now] from traditional academic writing and media criticism. Here, history-teaching and -learning is rooted in an oral history framework: that we learn what happened to communities from the people who constitute them.”
-- Svetlana Kitto * Bomb *
“We Are Having This Conversation Now carves a terrain of multimedia and citations. . . . [Juhasz and Kerr’s] push to talk about AIDS across temporalities is an effort to drag conversations around AIDS and AIDS cultural production into a public present and keep them there."
-- Mackenzie Lukenbill * The Baffler *
"
We Are Having This Conversation Now is suffused with an awareness that the dominant narratives of AIDS in the United States have traditionally centered the lives of gay white men." -- Alex Valenti * The Body *
Table of ContentsAbbreviations vii
Acknowledgments ix
The Time of AIDS. Timeline 1 xiii
Introduction. We Are Starting This Conversation, Again 1
Section One. Trigger
Trigger 1. What We See 19
Trigger 2. Seeing Tape in Time 30
Trigger 3. Being Triggered Together 49
Trigger 4. Being Triggered in Times 59
Trigger 5. Being Triggered by Absence 73
Trigger 6. How to Have an AIDS Memorial in an Epidemic 83
An AIDS Conversation Script to be Read Aloud. Timeline 2 95
Section Two. Silence
7. Silence + Object 101
8. Silence + Art 121
9. Silence + Video 139
10. Silence + Undetectability 159
11. Silence + Conversation 169
12. Silence + Interaction 183
13. Silence + Transformation 197
Conclusion. We Are Beginning This Conversation, Again 217
Sources and Influences. Timeline 3 227
Notes 251
Index 257
