AIDS and American Apocalypticism: The Cultural Semiotics of an Epidemic (review)

Performing a quick review of the literature on apocalypticism one will find analyses of Bruce Willis, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stephen King, and the X-Files. Perhaps these are not the prophetic voices of cosmic redemption that John had in mind when he recorded the Book of Revelation, yet scholars like Thomas Long find within popular culture attempts to create a totalizing world-view that is as much about social recovery as redemption. These narratives that name cause and effect rely on disparate and discrete signs generated from the latest (read urgent) information on everything from science to weather, politics to AIDS. Apocalypticism is a type of science (empiricism) absent methods or reproducibility, and it seems to be at the heart of what drives Americans to take extreme risks. American apocalypticism is responsible for the mad passion of abolitionist John Brown, the unrelenting determination of David Koresh, and the hopeful vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thomas Long in AIDS and American Apocalypticism: The Cultural Semiotics of an Epidemic takes us back to the early days of the AIDS epidemic when the initial conclusion about the source of the crisis was God’s wrath or punishment for wicked behavior. In his afterword, Long describes how during the height of erotic exuberance within the gay community he remained untouched by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Looking around at the minority of gay men who contracted the virus he, like many others, asked himself why he was spared. But then Long asks, “What does it mean that I (along with many others) am compelled to compose a meaning for my evasion of infection? From where comes our need for semiotic work? How does it continue to operate in ways that are harmful or helpful?” (178). The uncertainty about the cause, the extent of the epidemic, and the question of who is next inspired a wealth of discourses about the meaning of the epidemic.

The first chapter details the Christian fundamentalist jeremiads of the 1970s. Ultimately, these prophecies of doom found their object when AIDS was first classified as a gay man’s disease in the early 1980s. For the Moral Majority, the AIDS crisis was a sign of God’s wrath and a sign of the coming Armageddon. While we often associate apocalypticism with religious fundamentalism, Long notes that even AIDS activists tried to figure out what type of punishment and what future redemption was in store for the gay community. Long notes at the end of chapter 1 that apocalyptic discourses are not the rantings of anti-intellectuals who live at the margins of society. Rather, apocalyptic discourses have become a cultural idiom in America.

Chapter 2, “Exile of the Queer Evangelist,” explores queer theater and the polysemy of AIDS discourses. Examining Tim Miller’s My Queer Body, David Drake’s The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, and James McCourt’s Time Remaining, Long concludes that these works are variations “on the Puritan spiritual autobiography, with its components of ‘calling, conversion, temptation resisted, and regenerated living’” (61). These personal biographies are, in other words, situated within the genre of American apocalypticism.

Chapter 3, “Larry Kramer and the American Jeremiah,” explores what Long argues is the quintessential jeremiad sermon in the writings of Larry Kramer. This chapter provides a rich example of the early negotiations over the cultural semiotics of AIDS. By evoking fear of impeding doom, Kramer rallied AIDS activists to battle. Kramer saw early government inaction as intentional, as a way to let nature destroy the gay community. The flipside of his vocal denunciation of government-sponsored genocide was a message to the gay community about the need to develop mainstream middle-class values: monogamy, dignity, and stronger community. In addition to describing the writings and politics of Kramer, Long details the contest between Kramer and the gay activists who repudiated his jeremiads. Many critics believed that Kramer’s confrontational discourse essentialized gay identity and collapsed that identity...