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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

Benjamin Kahan
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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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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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • “The Dead Never Die”
  • Edited by Benjamin Kahan, Louisiana State University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
  • Online publication: 17 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108918725.009
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  • “The Dead Never Die”
  • Edited by Benjamin Kahan, Louisiana State University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
  • Online publication: 17 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108918725.009
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • “The Dead Never Die”
  • Edited by Benjamin Kahan, Louisiana State University
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Queer American Literature
  • Online publication: 17 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108918725.009
Available formats
×