What kinds of historical narratives might you be able to tell, based on the materials in this collection? What would be missing from your narrative, if you based it entirely on records in this collection? What kinds of sources would you need to find to address those gaps?
Finding aid to the ACT UP/Los Angeles Records Coll2011-010
The material included in Finding aid to the ACT UP/Los Angeles Records Coll2011-010 Provides insight to the first political movements during the peak of the AIDS epidemic. It outlines the strong efforts made by ACT UP to help those affected by AIDS in the New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. What is missing from the narrative is the oppressive culture of the early eighties which sparked the political movement. AIDS carried a negative stigma which was associated with ‘a perverse lifestyle held by the gay community’. This stigma crippled the development of AIDS offered assistance and left a growing number of people vulnerable to the disease. A stigma that falsely labeled AIDS as the gay disease that only affected homosexuals. The stigma that manifested hostility towards the gay community and left everyone else ignorant and without the proper knowledge of the disease they remained at risk of contracting it.
Sources which would serve in filling the gaps would be early medical journals on AIDS to reflect the early ignorance on the subject. In addition to current medical journals to explain how the disease became so promenade in the gay community. A community which priory did not have use for. Individual stories pertaining to social conditions would also be useful in addressing the gaps of the narrative. While the archive outlines the political movements corresponding to the medical system, it fails to address the social struggles. The intersecting factors of systemic and cultural discrimination the community had to fight against in an effort to survive the disease.
I would also include literature written during this struggle. The poems and novels that attempted to form a narrative around the epidemic. Many poems do an amazing job at undoing the barriers which were formed around the AIDS epidemic. They portray AIDS as a disease and not a force that targets ‘people who live a certain lifestyle’. The individual narratives help do away with the negative stigma by allowing people to associate with them and understand that people being affected were just like everyone else. These people deserved to be properly cared for by their government and casted away like a leopard.
Hi there!
The archive you choose sounds very intriguing, especially the scope at which it decided to construct a narrative. Great job discussing where the archive fails at portraying a one-way narrative. However, I have to question why the institution that curated the archive choose to tell a narrative that focuses solely on the political movements that sprung up in the midst of the epidemic. Did they want to show how the public servants reacted? Did they seek to show what the political impact in the community was due to the epidemic, in both the community at large and the LGBTQIA . Perhaps they should have looked at documenting the individuals in the political movements, specifically their reasons for becoming active and how they saw their work impact the communities they themselves were involved in. I would be especially interested in seeing how individuals who were AIDS positive became involved politically and what there political goals were. The power structure in a bureaucratic system often neglects more personal aspects of a movement, yet these narratives are those they are seeking to preserve.
Hey! Your blog post is very interesting and well thought of. It is truly saddening that the lack of medical knowledge causes people to suffer from stigma and societal hate. I agree that it would be interesting to put in the literature that was written because it would truly help us understand what people went through during that time. Though, I still believe it is most important to get an unbiased and purely medical opinion that is supported by facts to give a proper explanation of the disease. I also agree with wdorantes who commented on your blog post and said that it would be very interesting to learn more about individuals who tested positive for AIDS being involved in politics and truly changing the way people view those who carry it.
Hi,
I think this post did a good job breaking down the materials from the database. I agreed that many sources are needed to fill in the gap of the missing narratives so that the social stigma of AIDS can be relieved, which is important since you mentioned that people surviving the disease also suffered from the cultural discrimination. Including both medical journals and literatures is a good and thoughtful idea!