“Language Is My Second Language”: Dangerous Writing and Hiv-Affected Communities in Tom Spanbauer’s In the City of Shy Hunters

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to analyze the U.S. writer and teacher Tom Spanbauer’s novel In the City of Shy Hunters by means of theoretical perspectives that embrace both queer and communitarian epistemologies. The novel, set mainly in New York City in the mid-1980s, is narrated in first person by the protagonist and shows how HIV/AIDS, and the elevated social stigma surrounding it, affects different classes and ethnicities, as well as gender, sexual and corporal diversities. It experiments with a particular writing style and teaching method that Spanbauer calls dangerous writing; that is, how to expose our inner life and secrets, which are often related to social taboos. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the connection between dangerous writing, queer studies (Judith Butler, Annamarie Jagose) and community theory (Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot and Roberto Esposito) by adopting a multidisciplinary approach to literary critical analysis. The main result of this study demonstrates that the singularities represented in the novel, who are mostly queer and affected by HIV/AIDS, can create inoperative communities and communities of lovers, open to otherness as well as being spontaneous, antisocial and momentary, with a recognition and acceptance of mortality.

KEYWORDS:

• Community theory
• dangerous writing
• finitude
• HIV/AIDS
• immunity
• queer theory
• singularities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I prefer to keep just the first letter capitalized in Hiv/Aids because the full uppercase stands out in a text. My intention is to reduce its social stigma. Moreover, in journalistic language in English, Hiv and Aids are sometimes spelt like this, although it is not common. “HIV/AIDS” in full uppercase will be shown only in the abstract and the quotations I mention in this text. My objective is not to change how an acronym should be spelt. Rather, I would like to suggest an alternative way of dealing with certain terms that contain a high social stigma.

2. The concept of “crossing over” (reaching Manhattan) is related to changing one’s name and possibly one’s identity, as I will briefly explore in connection with queer singularities in section 3.

3. This context is reflected in the milestone documentary Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingstone, 1990), as well as in the TV series Pose (Ryan Murphy, 2018).

4. This is linked to the ideas of Ronald Barthes (2010, new version) that language is not an innocent tool and Michel Foucault (1972) that language and social discourses are forms of power.

5. (Martín Salván, Rodríguez Salas, & Jiménez Heffernan, 2013; Rodríguez Salas, Martín Salván, & López, 2018).

6. There are very few published academic studies (e.g., Norman, 2010) related to Spanbauer’s dangerous writing within the field of literary criticism.

7. Spanbauer (2014b) explains that “truth” must be properly explored to become truer (by lying):

“It takes balls to make a safe place for yourself where you can tell what is true for you. What is true for you is usually not allowed and is forbidden” (n. p.).

8. A cis person feels comfortable with their gender assigned at birth, unlike trans (the opposite of cis), gender nonbinary or intersex persons (intersexuality is related more to anatomy). In this text, unless otherwise specified, heterosexuality will be always connected to cis people.

9. I prefer to write Lgbtiq+ in lowercase since the capital letters stand out in a text and this acronym is mainly used as an adjective.

10. Homophobia was the most widespread term in those years (inclusive and exclusive at the same time), although all Lgbtiq+ people were affected.

11. For example, tuberculosis and certain types of meningitis, pneumonia or cancer.

12. From now on all the page numbers will be related to the novel.

13. Words (from Hamlet) whispered by the Shakespearean drag queen Rose to Will just before dying (473).

14. These words are whispered by Harry on his dying bed, celebrating life while dying (411).

15. I have decided to use “they” for Ruby, as they are a queer character and I am not sure what pronoun they would have used for themselves.

16. This is Spanbauer’s choice (through Rose) to use the generic masculine “he” to refer to a person.

17. It is easier to verbalize that you have, for example, diabetes, hepatitis C or even cancer than it is to admit that you are living with Hiv. For further information, please refer to Turan et al. (2018), who analyze how stigma affects people living with Hiv.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.