| Description |
The intent of this investigation is to tease out the tensions between words, information and the virus-to explore how bodies and words are linked together in epidemics of disease and signification. This thesis approaches these infectious connections with a literary bent: it examines three narratives in light of the viral web of AIDS and language. The playing out of chains of infection and meaning in these texts about disease, which are ultimately "diseased" themselves, take place in a temporal framework; the threat of the virus draws unusual attention upon the perception of time. Each text explores the complexity of viral interconnections of information in space and time. Each work is situated in this "viral net" of relations in unique ways and explores different strategies in resisting its deadliest encroachments. The challenge for these works in depicting and resisting the active, interdependent field of interactions between words, bodies and viruses is do so (with different degrees of innovation) in a medium that is linear and disconnected. The Normal Heart is a ground level representation of "reality" in the beginning of the AIDS crisis. As an AIDS activist as well as a playwright, Larry Kramer understands the kind of discourse that is necessary to fight the virus with strategies of rhetoric. The reading of his play outlines the linguistic techniques that Kramer uses to battle an epidemic of signification. Randy Shilts' And The Band Played On chronicles the key events in the first years of the AIDS epidemic. In particular, Shilts traces his information sources back in time in an attempt to find the origins of the virus. Focusing on criticisms of Shilts' media constructions about "Patient Zero," this chapter will discuss the implications of Shilts' narrative strategy for linguistic signification. Herve Guibert's autobiographical To The Friend Who Did Not Save My Life complexly portrays the relations of words and viruses through the medium of time. Guibert's focus on both literary and physical cures draws striking parallels between language and illness, which are linked by the medium of information exchange; the viral nature of language itself is at the heart of the text. |
