[csaa-forum] Positive Images: Gay Men and the Culture of 'Post-Crisis'. New book from I. B. Tauris Library of Gender and Popular Culture

[Dion Kagan]

*With apologies for cross posting*

Dear colleagues,
I'm writing to let you know about my book, *Positive Images*, which has
just been released from I. B. Tauris in their Gender and Popular Culture
series.
Best wishes, Dion.

*Description:*

A tidal wave of panic surrounded homosexuality and AIDS in the 1980s and
early '90s, the period commonly called 'The AIDS Crisis'. With the advent
of antiretroviral drugs in the mid '90s, however, the meaning of an HIV
diagnosis radically changed. These game-changing drugs now enable many
people living with HIV to lead a healthy, regular life, but how has this
dramatic shift impacted the representation of gay men and HIV in popular
culture? Positive Images is the first detailed examination of how the
relationship between gay men and HIV has transformed in the past two
decades. From *Queer as Folk* to *Chemsex*, *The Line of Beauty* to *The
Normal Heart*, Dion Kagan examines literature, film, TV, documentaries and
news coverage from across the English-speaking world to unearth the
socio-cultural foundations underpinning this 'post-crisis' period. His
analyses provide acute insights into the fraught legacies of the AIDS
Crisis and its continued presence in the modern queer consciousness.

*Endorsements*

‘In this landmark study of the representation of gay men in contemporary
popular culture, Dion Kagan shows how the panicked response to AIDS during
the 1980s continues to haunt “post-crisis” gay life, unsettling its
normalization by resuscitating the association of homosexuality with death
and disease. In a series of carefully elaborated case studies drawn from
the mainstream media and informed by feminist and queer theory, Kagan
traces the transformation of HIV/AIDS into a signifier of social and sexual
backwardness that conflicts with the normative aspirations of neoliberal
gay identities.’

–Robert J. Corber, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in American Institutions
and Values, Trinity College, Connecticut.

 ‘In this erudite analysis of representations of Western gay life in
“postcrisis” times, Dion Kagan re-activates the critical energies of early
HIV cultural analysis for contemporary queer theory to ask what a “positive
image” of gay life could possibly be in the current polarised environment
that lurches between “progressive” attachments to clean, upstanding,
respectable, sexless marrying types and the sensationalised monsters of
chemsex, barebacking, HIV-positive sex and sex addiction, each of which
emerge as figures of a “retrograde” sexuality we “should have grown out of
by now” that effectively serve to “re-crisis” the present. Generous and
expansive in its critical engagements, while sparkling throughout with
astute and perceptive readings, *Positive Images* is a remarkable feat of
intergenerational queer kinship that introduces an exciting new voice in
sexuality scholarship’.

–Kane Race, Associate Professor in Gender and Cultural Studies, University
of Sydney

To support I. B. Tauris and order a paper or electronic version for your
library, details are here: https://tinyurl.com/y9c4gqu2

Special Offer Price £50.40 RRP £72.00* Hardback | To order online go to
www.ibtauris.com and enter the discount code AN2 when prompted.


*Dion Kagan*
Co-Host: The Rereaders <http://www.therereaders.com>
Columnist: The Lifted Brow <http://theliftedbrow.com>
W: Academia.edu <https://unimelb.academia.edu/DionKagan>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.cdu.edu.au/pipermail/csaa-forum/attachments/20180501/328a6d9f/attachment-0001.html