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Abstract
This essay demonstrates how two U.S. zines produced from 1990 to 1999 by and for gay men with HIV/AIDS—Diseased Pariah News (DPN) and Infected Faggot Perspectives (IFP)—constitute counterpublics. I demonstrate how DPN and IFP constitute counterpublics through thematization of two important forms of difference—blood status (HIV-positive or HIV-negative), and political ideology. I then specify and elaborate primary modes of corporeal expressivity in the zines—the erotic/sexual and the grotesque—to demonstrate the work that each mode does for the counterpublics.
Portions of this manuscript appeared in the author's unpublished dissertation; portions of this manuscript also were presented (with Catherine R. Squires) at the 1995 Graduate Student Conference on Culture and Methodology at Northwestern University, the 1996 meeting of the National Communication Association in San Diego, and the 2004 “Rhetoric Goes Public” Conference at Northwestern University.
Portions of this manuscript appeared in the author's unpublished dissertation; portions of this manuscript also were presented (with Catherine R. Squires) at the 1995 Graduate Student Conference on Culture and Methodology at Northwestern University, the 1996 meeting of the National Communication Association in San Diego, and the 2004 “Rhetoric Goes Public” Conference at Northwestern University.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to acknowledge the College of Public Programs for its support and Daniel Bao for information and help.
The author wishes to thank Michele L. Hammers, Janice M. Norton, Catherine R. Squires, Linda Steiner, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This essay is dedicated to the memory of Dwight Conquergood.
Notes
Portions of this manuscript appeared in the author's unpublished dissertation; portions of this manuscript also were presented (with Catherine R. Squires) at the 1995 Graduate Student Conference on Culture and Methodology at Northwestern University, the 1996 meeting of the National Communication Association in San Diego, and the 2004 “Rhetoric Goes Public” Conference at Northwestern University.
1. This notion of zines as an underground space emphasizes one part of an important dialectic—inward- or self-address. Later I explore the other part of the dialectic—outward address, or engagement with other publics.
2. In the remainder of this essay, I use the term “serostatus” to refer to the presence or absence of antibodies to HIV in a person's blood. Along these lines, “seropositive” refers both to the presence of HIV antibodies and to people with HIV-antibodies in their blood. “Seronegative” refers both to the absence of HIV antibodies and to people with no HIV-antibodies in their blood.
3. Duncombe (Citation1997) notes that the Internet has become a robust medium for the production of zines; however, he predicts that electronic zines will complement rather than replace their print-based kin.
4. DPN and IFP appeared nearly simultaneously with other HIV/AIDS zines in the United States, such as Piss Elegant (San Francisco, CA; 1990–1991), Dennis Cooper Must Die (San Francisco, CA; 1991), The Mark Papers Project (Warren, OH; 1991), Reality Check (Santa Fe, NM; 1991–1992), and Kill the Robot (Yellow Springs, OH; no dates). HIV/AIDS zines from other countries appeared shortly after—Death Camp (Manchester, UK; 1994) and The Daily Plague (Sydney, Australia; late 1990s). These zines are indexed in CatalogQ, an online database of LGBTQ periodicals at seven libraries in California (http://www.catalogq.net/wwindex.html). The publication dates that I list appear in CatalogQ and reflect archival availability. Illustrating both the variable productivity and the variable availability of zines, holdings of HIV/AIDS zines at these libraries range from a single issue of The Mark Papers Project and Death Camp to the 14 issues of IFP. Of all of the HIV/AIDS zines available, DPN and IFP were the most prolific by far (11 and 14 issues, respectively) and the most readily available. In addition to print-based zines, alternative HIV/AIDS media artifacts took the form of Dentata magazine (an online zine for women with HIV/AIDS), bloodletting performance art by Ron Athey, modern dance by Bill T. Jones, educational/activist documentaries such as Doctors, Liars and Women and DiAna's Hair Ego, and more. For thoughtful catalogues and analyses of media relating to street demonstrations, documentaries and community television, and theatre and performance art, see, respectively: Douglas Crimp and Adam Rolston (Citation1990), Alexandra Juhasz (Citation1995), and David Román (Citation1998).
5. These figures, like the figures I report for Infected Faggot Perspectives, do not include letters to the editor, interviews, or recurrent columns.
6. Daniel Bao, a business manager for DPN and the zine's official “Oppressed Non-Pariah of Color,” reports that a 500–1000-copy first-run printing of DPN's first issue was supplemented with a 1000-copy reprint in the aftermath of its successful debut. Most of the subsequent issues were published in runs of 2000–3000 copies, with a peak run of 5000 copies (private communication, February 7, 2005). I have been unable to determine circulation numbers for IFP.
7. DPN editors did not operate from a position of ideological purity with regard to advertising; that is, they did not refuse advertising monies from potentially corrupt sources. Indeed, during our interview, Daniel Bao claimed that DPN would have accepted advertising money from pharmaceutical companies (personal communication, January 16, 2005), institutions long excoriated in AIDS activist circles for putting profits before people. In contrast, IFP editors announced several times that donations, advertising, art, ads, and labor were accepted from most sources but not all. Those excluded include “right-wing jerks” and “New Age spiritualists.” In both zines, New Age spiritualists earn derision in part for their belief that because individuals are fully responsible or capable of controlling the events of their lives, having or suffering from HIV or AIDS must be a failure of will on the part of the infected.
8. Auli appears as a contributor to Issue 1 and a co-editor and contributor in all of the subsequent issues.
9. This is not to say that all zines are best understood as counterpublics or that all rhetorical expressions by gay men with HIV/AIDS are exemplars of counterpublic discourse.
10. By identification, I simply mean expressions of favorable opinion, alliance, or solidarity. By disidentifications, I mean expressions of negative opinion or rejections of alliances or solidarity.
11. Jan Zita Grover (Citation1987) offers an instructive reading of how the terms “general population” and “AIDS virus” framed the infected in (im)moral terms and framed infection as a death sentence. Douglas Crimp (Citation2002) recounts how HIV/AIDS activists have labored to recuperate queer sexuality in the face of efforts to lethalize or neutralize it.
12. My invocation of versions of queer is tactical. While some versions of queer theory are attentive to materiality, class, race, and ethnicity, other versions have earned significant critique for their inattention to materiality (for these critiques see Hennessy, Citation1993; Maynard, Citation1999) or their under-interrogation of race and ethnicity (Johnson, Citation2001; Muñoz, Citation1999), among other criticisms.
13. H. T. anticipates José Muñoz's (1999, p. 146) observation that the mainstream, White-dominated gay community “ignores or exoticizes Latino bodies.”
14. Additional articles in IFP address oppressions committed by the Catholic Church, heterosexism and heteronormativity, racism in the LGBTQ community, violence against queers in Mexico, a lesbian writer series, and more.
15. Ironic readings, or readings against the grain, are warranted by the ubiquity of camp humor in the zines. Meyer argues that camp humor should be considered “queer parody,” an “activist strategy” that is both political and critical (Citation1994, p. 1). As a mode of criticism, camp humor works by deriding or mocking what is considered to be natural, presumed, normative, or authoritative. Elsewhere (Brouwer, Citation2005) I address the roles of camp humor, including the abundant use of noms de plumes, in producing a risibility politics about HIV/AIDS.
16. It is worth noting that this piece was contributed by a reader and was not authored by DPN editors. Still, the editors’ decision to publish it renders them culpable for its racism.
17. In his analysis of AIDS activist media, Gillett (Citation2003) names both DPN and POZ (a glossy, nationally distributed monthly magazine by and for people with HIV/AIDS, focusing on health and politics) as alternative media and concludes that the magazine and the zine manifest the same goals, encounter the same challenges, and produce the same effects. While DPN and POZ share important characteristics, I think that Gillett significantly overstates similarity between the publications. Notably, DPN does not share POZ's “general audience” orientation; nor is there much evidence that DPN struggled anywhere nearly as strenuously as POZ did with the issue of corporate advertising. The better comparison, I submit, is between DPN and IFP. Even so, as I have demonstrated, these zines constitute different counterpublics.
18. I claim that IFP's counterpublic suffered from, but was not eradicated by, termination of the zine. Although neither of the zines are produced any longer, they still circulate through activist lore, appearances in mainstream media, patrons’ use of them at LGBTQ archives, through Long's (2000) article and this manuscript, and in myriad, untraceable ways. Their continuing circulation, according to Warner (Citation2002), suggests that they continue to constitute a public.