From San Francisco to Atlanta and Back Again: Ideologies of Mobility in the AIDS Quilt's Search for a Homeland

In this essay, I examine two key controversies about the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt that span the years 2001–7. Specifically, these controversies are the relocation of the Quilt from San Francisco to Atlanta and the firing of NAMES Project founder and spokesperson Cleve Jones. These controversies bring to the forefront the importance of ideologies about place and movement. Embedded in these controversies is an assumption about the nature of the Quilt—that it does its work best when it engages in "promiscuous mobility." Yet this assumption stands alongside an equally strong assumption about the Quilt's need to rest in an appropriate homeland. Thus, these controversies nominate mobility as both a key topic for analysis and a conceptual resource. I employ mobility as a conceptual framework for exploring themes of movement, space, place, homeland, and ownership in these two controversies and for exploring the intersections of these themes with sexuality and race.