Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Synchronic Histories of American Sexuality
- The Sexuality of American History
- 1 Trans/Atlantic Origin Stories
- 2 Queering the Founding; Or, the Revolution in Sex
- 3 Whither the Queer History of Slavery?
- 4 Queering Immigration and the Social Body, 1875–1924
- 5 The Queerness of World War II
- 6 Queer Bonds of Cold War Sexuality
- 7 “The Dead Never Die”
- 8 Fiction in the Post–Lawrence v. Texas Era, or Inventing Heteronormative Queerness
- Queer Literary Movements
- Part II Diachronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Part III Queer Methods
- Index
7 - “The Dead Never Die”
Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, Queer Temporalities, and the Literature of AIDS
from The Sexuality of American History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2024
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Synchronic Histories of American Sexuality
- The Sexuality of American History
- 1 Trans/Atlantic Origin Stories
- 2 Queering the Founding; Or, the Revolution in Sex
- 3 Whither the Queer History of Slavery?
- 4 Queering Immigration and the Social Body, 1875–1924
- 5 The Queerness of World War II
- 6 Queer Bonds of Cold War Sexuality
- 7 “The Dead Never Die”
- 8 Fiction in the Post–Lawrence v. Texas Era, or Inventing Heteronormative Queerness
- Queer Literary Movements
- Part II Diachronic Histories of American Sexuality
- Part III Queer Methods
- Index
Summary
The chapter examines imaginative writing about AIDS in light of improved medical treatments for HIV, suggesting that every example of AIDS literature functions as a time capsule documenting its historical moment. Yet, the literature of AIDS is haunted by unfinished pasts that scramble its temporalities and unfix its historical locations. This chapter introduces and conceptualizes an emerging “literature of PrEP” (pre-exposure prophylaxis) in work by Jericho Brown, Matthew Lopez, Jacques Rancourt, and Sam Sax, showing how developments in biomedicine have inspired diverse literary reflections on the epidemic’s four-decade history. As exemplified by Lopez’s epic play The Inheritance, PrEP literature engages crucial questions concerning what one queer generation inherits from, or owes to, another. The chapter argues that, in contrast to scientific or sociological accounts of HIV/AIDS, literary representation is uniquely effective at capturing the haunted quality of AIDS writing because it can reveal how ostensibly outmoded forms of the past persist in the present.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature , pp. 142 - 157Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024