AIDS, Perspective by incongruity, and gay identity in Larry Kramer's “1,112 and counting”

AIDS activist Larry Kramer's 1983 essay, “1,112 and Counting,” was a key rhetorical event in the development of AIDS activism by gays. This analysis relies on perspective by incongruity to explain Kramer's attempts to stimulate AIDS activism by altering gays’ perceptions of the disease and its implications for their lives and identities. The author argues that the power of perspective by incongruity in this case is linked to its facilitation of genuine argument, a personalized form of persuasion that forces both arguer and audience to confront an argument's implications for their own identities and behavior as moral human beings. The conclusion suggests that “1,112 and Counting” functions as a variant of constitutive rhetoric that de‐constructs and re‐constructs audience identity.