Cover

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pp. 1-1

Title Page, Copyright

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pp. 2-5

Contents

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pp. v-vi

Acknowledgments

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pp. vii-viii

This book would not have been possible without the support, direction, and encouragement of so many people. A tremendous thank you to Ksenija Bilbija, Rubén Medina, and Juan Egea for the insightful feedback they provided when this project was in the dissertation stage. ...

Introduction

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pp. 1-16

Since 1981, the world has been profoundly impacted by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). On an individual level, HIV and AIDS possess the potential to cause the body’s immune function to become compromised and, as a consequence, may undermine an individual’s control over his or her own body, ...

Chapter One - The Body as Weapon: HIV as Revenge

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pp. 17-56

Revenge as a theme has pervaded both public and private discourses and can be found in areas as diverse as religion, law, psychology, and literature, to name just a few. The motivations for revenge are just as diverse as its manifestations, but underlying all such vengeance narratives is the desire to “get even” or correct a grievance ...

Chapter Two - Eroticism and AIDS: The Confluence of Desire, Death, and Writing

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pp. 57-93

“AIDS is not so much a punishment for promiscuity—the wages of sin— as a brutal material proof of something known but never quite comprehended, namely that death inhabits sexuality: perversely, lethally, ecstatically” (Dollimore xi). Cultural critic Jonathan Dollimore’s blatantly honest assertion ...

Chapter Three - Isolation and Exile: AIDS and the Solitary Body

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pp. 94-137

The previous two chapters focused on the AIDS-infected body in its interactions with other bodies in the arena of retribution and revenge, as well as erotic escapism. Despite their drastic differences, those bodies and their experiences with AIDS were in large part defined by their interactions with other bodies—before contracting HIV, ...

Chapter Four - Forging (Comm)unity through Hybridity: Pedro Lemebel’s Loco afán: crónicas de sidario

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pp. 138-171

The previous chapter illustrated the profound potential that AIDS and HIV have to isolate those affected by it, as the narratives by Prieto, Mallach, and Pérez dramatically illustrated. In the first of those texts, the disease triggers a self-imposed isolation, an intentional erasure of the self from the social body. ...

Concluding Thoughts - Future Markers of Identity: An Ever-Shifting Landscape

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pp. 172-179

Throughout the thirty-year history of the AIDS epidemic, there have been many significant advances in the areas of both prevention and medical care, drastically slowing the progression of the disease in infected individuals and cutting the rate of infection. ...

Works Cited

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pp. 180-184

Index

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pp. 185-199