Abstract
This chapter builds upon each of the previous chapters, synthesizing their arguments and applying them to the case of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). This chapter is oriented toward the poetic act of meaning-making, political resistance, and theology of desire exhibited by ACT UP. ACT UP was a non-religious, and at times anti-religious, organization, so it might seem odd at first to write a theology of it. This chapter argues broadly for a theological thinking oriented toward desire, meaning-making, and the creation of alternate possible worlds. The implication is that theology is always already political. That allows for both political readings of the theological and, perhaps more controversially, theological readings of the political. In that spirit and examining ACT UP’s general engagement with death and political funerals specifically, this chapter examines a secular political organization like ACT UP through a theological lens.
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Notes
- 1.
I would like to thank Alan Jay Richard for his generosity in reading an early version of this chapter and providing invaluable feedback. His insights and reflections have immensely improved my argument and challenged the way I think about its subjects. I am especially grateful to Jan Powers, Pam Monn, and Grady Crittendon for presenting me with opportunities to fight back and to witness meaning-making in action.
- 2.
ACT UP’s statement of purpose, http://actupny.org.
- 3.
Shepard, 13.
- 4.
Eric Sawyer, “An ACT UP Founder ‘Acts Up’ for Africa’s Access to AIDS,” 88–102 in From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization, eds. Benjamin Shepard and Ronald Hayduk (Verso: London and New York, 2002), 90.
- 5.
Sawyer, 90–1.
- 6.
Sawyer, 92.
- 7.
David Wojnarowicz, http://actupny.org/diva/polfunsyn.html.
- 8.
She writes, “The AIDS epidemic is cultural and linguistic as well as biological and biomedical.” Paula A. Treichler, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999), 1.
- 9.
Treichler, 1.
- 10.
Treichler, 11–2.
- 11.
Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach, with medical and scientific consultation from Joseph Sonnabend, M.D. (New York: Tower Press, N.Y.C., 1983).
- 12.
Charles E. Morris III, “ACT UP 25: HIV/AIDS, Archival Queers, and Mnemonic World Making,” Quarterly Journal of Speech (Vol. 98, No. 1, February 2012, pp. 49–53), 50.
- 13.
Morris, 50.
- 14.
Taylor, 165.
- 15.
Taylor, 164–5.
- 16.
See Joy Episalla’s interview with Sarah Schulman from December 6, 2003, for the ACT UP Oral History Project. Episalla––a close friend of Fisher as well as Tim Bailey––described Fisher’s political funeral on pp. 39–41 of the transcript of the interview. http://www.actuporalhistory.org/interviews/images/episalla.pdf.
- 17.
Mark Lowe Fisher, “Bury Me Furiously.” http://actupny.org/diva/polfunsyn.html.
- 18.
Charles E. Winquist, Desiring Theology (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
- 19.
Tillich writes, “Religion is the dimension of depth in all [functions of man’s spiritual life] …. What does the metaphor depth mean? It means that the religious aspect points to that which is ultimate, infinite, unconditional in man’s spiritual life. Religion, in the largest and most basic sense of the word, is ultimate concern. And ultimate concern is manifest in all creative functions of the human spirit. It is manifest in the moral sphere as the unconditional seriousness of the moral demand. Therefore, if someone rejects religion in the name of the moral function of the human spirit, he rejects religion in the name of religion. Ultimate concern is manifest in the realm of knowledge as the passionate longing for ultimate reality. Therefore, if anyone rejects religion in the name of the cognitive function of the human spirit, he rejects religion in the name of religion. Ultimate concern is manifest in the aesthetic function of the human spirit as the infinite desire to express ultimate meaning. Therefore, if anyone rejects religion in the name of the aesthetic function of the human spirit, he rejects religion in the name of religion. You cannot reject religion with ultimate seriousness, because ultimate seriousness, or the state of being ultimately concerned, is itself religion. Religion is the substance, the ground, and the depth of man’s spiritual life. This is the religious aspect of the human spirit.” Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. Robert C. Kimball (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 7–8.
- 20.
Winquist, ix–x.
- 21.
José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York and London: New York University Press, 2009), 16.
- 22.
Muñoz, 116.
- 23.
Muñoz, 1.
- 24.
The two most notable examples are Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?” AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism, eds. Douglas Crimp and Leo Bersani (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988) and Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).
- 25.
This is what has led historians examining what today’s activists might learn from ACT UP to argue that, “In reflecting on ACT UP’s 25th anniversary, we need a ‘critical nostalgia’ regarding not just what histories we tell but how this very telling structures the rules of engagement between queer leftist generations. Such considerations complement Muñoz’s ‘critically utopian’ desire for a relationality that animates queer futurity.” Pascal Emmer, “Talkin’ ‘Bout Meta-Generation: ACT UP History and Queer Futurity,” Quarterly Journal of Speech (Vol. 98, No. 1, February 2012, pp. 89–96), 93.
- 26.
Muñoz, 26.
- 27.
Tim Bailey’s political funeral, held on July 1, 1993, in Washington, DC. http://actupny.org/divatv/netcasts/tim_bailey.html. Also, see the same interview with Joy Episalla as mentioned in note #33 above. Episalla was Bailey’s healthcare proxy and describes his political funeral on pp. 55–59 of the transcript of the interview. http://www.actuporalhistory.org/interviews/images/episalla.pdf.
- 28.
Muñoz, 96.
- 29.
ACT UP’s most notable die-in occurred during the “Stop the Church” action. On December 10, 1989, almost 5000 people associated with ACT UP gathered outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City to protest the Roman Catholic Archdiocese’s public stand against AIDS education and condom distribution and its opposition to abortion. A few dozen people entered the cathedral and interrupted mass, chanting “stop killing us!” Others fell to the floor and remained limp, miming death, and were removed on stretchers like corpses. One hundred and eleven people were arrested. See Peter Lewis Allen, The Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease, Past and Present (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 143. Also the ACT UP archives at http://www.actupny.org/YELL/stopchurch99.html and http://www.actupny.org/documents/cron-89.html.
- 30.
Taylor, 34.
- 31.
Muñoz, 41.
- 32.
David Wojnarowicz, http://actupny.org/reports/reportashes.html.
- 33.
Tim Bailey’s political funeral. Emphasis added.
- 34.
How to Survive a Plague. Directed by David France. Public Square Films, 2012. DVD.
- 35.
Rafsky gained notoriety in March of 1992 when he heckled then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton by interrupting him in the middle of his stump speech to say, “This is the center of the epidemic. What are you doing about it?” When Clinton asked Rafsky to calm down, Rafsky responded, “I can’t calm down. I’m dying of AIDS while you’re dying of ambition.” “Robert Rafsky, Writer and Activist in AIDS Fight, Dies,” February 23, 1993. The Washington Post as found at http://www.actupny.org/divatv/netcasts/rafsky_reads.html.
- 36.
Bob Rafsky speaking at a protest at the offices of Daiichi Pharmaceuticals as seen in the documentary film, How to Survive a Plagu e.
- 37.
Muñoz, 46.
- 38.
Muñoz, 35.
- 39.
David Wojnarowicz, http://www.actupny.org/diva/synWoj.html.
- 40.
Winquist, x.
- 41.
Muñoz, 189.
- 42.
Muñoz, 35.
- 43.
Muñoz, 169–70.
- 44.
Taylor, 62.
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Miller, J.E. (2019). Act Up. In: Resisting Theology, Furious Hope. Radical Theologies and Philosophies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17391-3_5
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