Precarious Proximities: A Symptomatological Reading of Intimacy in Anglophone HIV/AIDS Life Writing

Abstract

Recording the narratives of those who live with HIV, or whose lives have been subsequently taken by AIDS, has been imperative for the mediation of gay male identities in the Western world since the late 1980s. As a genre, HIV/AIDS life writing, or testimony, has been crucial as it offers a means of reflecting on the ravages of the disease by positioning authors as intimate witnesses. This thesis examines the role and constitution of intimacy in HIV/AIDS life writing. It challenges studies of HIV/AIDS life writing that declare these to be grounded in the "presumption of fatality" (Couser) and instead draws on the Spinozian formulation, later taken up by Gilles Deleuze, that we do not even know what bodies can do. Taking this further, this project argues that we do not even know what a body with HIV/AIDS is, let alone how it operates or what it can enable between bodies. I contend that intimacy, as orchestrated in my archive of texts, is an event, a process of becoming that actively contours structures of ordinariness, temporality, sociality, and corporeality embedded in the act of witnessing.

Although such an account risks privileging the intensities of affect over the representational dimension of HIV/AIDS life writing, I utilise both representational and affective modes of analysis to design a model of reparative reading that suspends the need to value one mode of analysis over the other. Testimony is a genre that actively combines representational and affective modes. Thus, the innovation of this thesis is not only theoretical, but also methodological, deploying a symptomatological reading, developed from Deleuze, of HIV/AIDS life writing from North America, Australia and New Zealand to interpret and give meaning to the 'symptoms' of intimacy. A symptomatology of HIV/AIDS life writing holds 'life' and 'death' in tension, providing a framework for negotiating the dynamic intersection between illness and identity. Thus, instead of reading these texts for signs of death and mourning, a symptomatological criticism enables new ways of thinking about what a 'life' is.

This thesis proceeds in six chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce, respectively, the conceptual and methodological framework, and articulate the practice of symptomatological reading. Chapters 3 to 6, which offer symptomatological readings, are further divided into two sections of two chapters each. The first section, "Witnessing Intimacy," focuses on texts written by men witnessing the death of their partners. These memoirs by Paul Monette, Timothy Conigrave, Fenton Johnson, and John Foster are written as eulogies, often revealing how intimacy materialises in the routine of everyday life. The second section, "Pathographies of Intimacy," focuses on first-hand accounts of living with HIV/AIDS. The diary of Eric Michaels, the writing of David Wojnarowicz, and the memoirs of Douglas Wright and David Caron provide testimonial accounts of how the disease impacts their own bodies and their interactions with others. Despite this artificial distinction between first-hand and second-hand acts of testimony, some of the memoirs traverse who is interpellated as the witness with Monette, Conigrave, and Foster also narrating their own struggle with the disease. Through these readings, I reconceptualise intimacy in a way that argues for the continuing value of cultural and literary theory as a means of engaging with texts that bear witness in the aftermath of immediate crisis.