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2 An Inflammatory Fag We Love to Hate larry Kramer, Polemicist “With this article I am calling for a MASSIVE DISRUPTION of the Sixth International AIDS Conference that is being held in San Francisco June 20–24.” Thus begins Larry Kramer’s essay, “A Call to Riot,” in a 1990 issue of OutWeek magazine. Kramer goes on to state in no uncertain terms that the government and then president George Bush want to see “ALL FAGGOTS, NIGGERS, JUNKIES, SPICS, WHORES, UNMARRIEDS, AND THEIR BABIES DEAD.” Throughout the course of this short article, he repeatedly calls upon those in the aforementioned groups—those who have been most affected by HIV and AIDS—to converge on San Francisco to stage a riot. Neither his words nor his unrelenting capitalization leave any doubt: “WE MUST RIOT! I AM CALLING FOR A FUCKING RIOT!” He proclaims, “WE MUST RIOT IN SAN FRANCISCO!” After reiterating yet again his initial request for a “massive disruption,” Kramer concludes his article with what reads as a demonstrator’s chant: “MASSIVE! DISRUPTION! RIOT! LIFE!”1 As a prominent gay rights and AIDS activist who played a pivotal role in the founding of both Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) and AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), and as a prolific speech maker and editorialist, Larry Kramer has been an extremely harsh critic of his fellow gay men. His invectives take on what he sees as the risky sexual behaviors and apathetic organizing within the gay community, arguing that the fight against AIDS should be more militant. Kramer’s scathing criticisms were generally loud and emotional , making liberal use of boldface type, profanity and crude language, and multiple exclamation points. His propensity to be shrill and nearly hysterical 66 chapter two in both speech and print, provoking the ire of gay activists and academics alike, has led to his reputation as an angry prophet, a moralist, and a polemicist . So forceful and pointed are Kramer’s appeals in “A Call to Riot” that there seems to be little room for misunderstanding or misinterpreting his words; indeed, numerous precautions were taken at the San Francisco AIDS conference to contain the potential uprising, and many in San Francisco’s gay community were angry at him for his provocation. However, when the piece was reprinted four years later in Reports from the Holocaust, Kramer’s compilation of his speeches, essays, and letters from 1978 to 1993, his commentary about the article suggests that his intentions might not have been as plain as they seemed. In a passage that is as muddy as “A Call to Riot” is clear, Kramer attempts to explain his use of the word “riot”: “I hadn’t given much thought to just what I meant by ‘riot.’ Or rather I knew what I meant but what I meant and what others thought I meant and what the word means were construed very differently by many people. . . . I didn’t mean violence, though I can see where it’s possible to read into my text that, if you are prone to it, by all means.” Despite the explicitness of his objectives, Kramer is clearly quite concerned, at least retrospectively, with the potential for unintended meanings and effects of his words. He finds it “sort of funny” that his article was thought to be a call for violence, but he also expresses his disappointment that the demonstration in San Francisco turned out to be relatively tame.2 His unease about the effects of his polemics speaks to their tendency to be somewhat uncontrollable or excessive, and this anxiety is mirrored by queer academic writers of the early 1990s who are equally concerned about the consequences of Kramer’s words. In this case, however, queer theorists engage in a continual refutation of Kramer, staking out their own stances in opposition to his, as if their objections to his positions can never be sufficiently expressed. If the directness and vehemence of Kramer’s polemics seem to indicate that there is no space within this form for interruptive or contrary readings, then their tendency to create unintended effects would suggest otherwise. Thus, it is not merely due to Kramer’s caustic style and personality or to the inflammatory nature of his words that his views have come to occupy such a central (if contentious) position among AIDS activists, within the queer community, and in queer theoretical work. Rather, this is also a result of the polemical form in which his invectives so often...

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