Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics

By Douglas Crimp

Book Overview

Essays challenging the increasing denial of the AIDS crisis and the rise of conservative gay politics.

In Melancholia and Moralism, Douglas Crimp confronts the conservative gay politics that replaced the radical AIDS activism of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He shows that the cumulative losses from AIDS, including the waning of militant response, have resulted in melancholia as Freud defined it: gay men's dangerous identification with the moralistic repudiation of homosexuality by the wider society.

With the 1993 march on Washington for lesbian and gay rights, it became clear that AIDS no longer determined the agenda of gay politics; it had been displaced by traditional rights issues such as gay marriage and the right to serve in the military. Journalist Andrew Sullivan, notorious for pronouncing the AIDS epidemic over, even claimed that once those few rights had been won, the gay rights movement would no longer have a reason to exist.

Crimp challenges such complacency, arguing that not only is the AIDS epidemic far from over, but that its determining role in queer politics has never been greater. AIDS, he demonstrates, is the repressed, unconscious force that drives the destructive moralism of the new, anti-liberation gay politics expounded by such mainstream gay writers as Larry Kramer, Gabriel Rotello, and Michelangelo Signorile, as well as Sullivan. Crimp examines various cultural phenomena, including Randy Shilts's bestseller And the Band Played On, the Hollywood films "Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia," and Magic Johnson's HIV infection and retirement from the Los Angeles Lakers. He also analyzes Robert Mapplethorpe's and Nicholas Nixon's photography, John Greyson's AIDS musical "Zero Patience," Gregg Bordowitz's video "Fast Trip, Long Drop," the Names Project Quilt, and the annual "Day without Art."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262532646
• ISBN13: 9780262532648
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.7" x 8.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Necessary Antedote to Prevailing Gay Views

Douglas Crimp's collection of essays, many of which were written a decade ago, still have relevance today. They provide a necessary antidote to the views of many gay commentators who claim to speak for gays and lesbians in a voice of assimulation and accomodation. Crimp deconstructs their arguments to reveal their ambivalence (at best) and their homophobia (at worst). Crimp's essays are uneven in that for those uninitiated to the jargon of queer theory, such as myself, their meaning are not readily apparent. However, Crimp is at his best when he sets aside the language of queer theory and shares his astute observations. I also assume that Crimp views gay identity as a social construct as opposed to an immutable trait in that Crimp heavyily relies upon the post-modern theories of Michel Foucault. As I believe otherwise, I am sure that this too contributed to my shortcomings in understanding Crimp's views.The reality of AIDS remains central to how gay men view ourselves and the world at large, even though we would like to believe otherwise. Crimp's discussion of the moralism (i.e., judgment that tends toward self-loathing) that has resulted from our collective, unresolved grief (or melancholia) because of AIDS is revealing, albeit not entirely convincing. The old assimulation vs. liberation dichotomy pre-existed AIDS. AIDS may have drastically moved the debate toward assimulation but I do not think that unresolved grief diminished liberation. If by liberation one means the knowledge of self and others resulting from our collective sexual experiences (or the political prerequisite of having the means and space to engage in this process) tragically it is the deaths from AIDS itself that hindered liberation. The grief arose therefrom, and remains today. Assimulation, i.e., the accomodation of our lives to the prevailing market-driven economy and the pull of tradition, was well under way before AIDS. Although I may not agree with Crimp's theory, I applaud Crimp for urging us from surrendering our sexual selves (or the process of becoming our sexual selves)by adopting a worldview that is foreign to our experiences.In his final essay Crimp bemoans the fact that very few queer theorists are able to share their liberatist views through the public media. However, Crimp concludes by amptly demonstrates that queer theory/liberation does not have to be arcane through his op-ed piece explaining why now more than ever continued, frank, and non-judgmental safe sex education is necessary to stem the spread of AIDS. (Unfortunately, the New York Times declined to publish it). I hope that in the future the "mainsteam" media will allow liberationists to voice their views. However, in view of Crimp's observations about the mainstrem media's inabilty to fathom the gay experiece, I am not very optimistic.