HIV and AIDS in Irish Theatre: Queer Masculinities, Punishment, and ‘Post-AIDS’ Culture

AbstractThis essay provides a critical survey of key Irish theatre productions that present queer men with HIV or AIDS as a central theme while also seeking to situate several of these productions within the controversial discourse of ‘post-AIDS’ as it plays out in Irish cultural and social discourses. Through this survey, this essay finds and critically elaborates how a discourse of AIDS as punishment is a common denominator in all of these plays; whether that be as a central metaphor in the drama or conversely as a trope th at theatre makers seek to disrupt. Throughout, this essay simultaneously attends to the ways in which non-realist, non-linear dramatic structures (as opposed to social realist narratives) have proved to be better positioned to present the realities of living with HIV or dying with AIDS in Ireland si nce the emergence of the first Irish AIDS epidemic in 1982. By approaching ‘post-AIDS’ discourses through the lens of HIV and AIDS in Irish theatre, this essay critically analyses the insidious ways in which ‘post-AIDS’ Irish culture is bound up with neoliberal discourses of homonormative as similation and cultural respectability, especially the figuring of HIV/AIDS as punishment for non-assimilation.
Source: Journal of Medical Humanities - Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research