Abstract
This essay draws connections between the new HIV prevention regime PrEP and AIDS memorial media and architecture in the USA, in particular the New York City AIDS Memorial, to propose that the biomedical dissemination of PrEP mirrors the ways in which memorial architecture orchestrates a visitor’s perception of the virus and its history, particularly as both invoke performances of immunity through allegories of war and defence.
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Notes
- 1.
As of January 2017, Australia, Canada, France, Norway, Peru, South Africa and the USA are the countries to have officially approved the drug Truvada for use as a daily prevention regime (PrEP ), though it seems likely more European countries will soon follow suit. Twenty-two countries currently have access to Truvada or generic versions, half of them in the Global North , as an antiretroviral therapy for people living with HIV. In some of these countries, it is not uncommon for Truvada to be prescribed as prevention (See Frellick 2016; PrEP Watch 2017; UNAIDS 2016).
- 2.
The Stonewall Inn is a bar located in Greenwich Village, New York City. On 28 June 1969, police raided the bar and the patrons and neighbourhood residents flooded the streets, which led to demonstrations there for another six days (see Rosenberg 2016). This had a crucial and lasting impact, representing a focal point in the modern struggle for the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tavia Nyong’o, Paul B. Preciado, Ann Pellegrini, Diana Taylor and Marianne Hirsch for their generous and critical responses to earlier drafts of this essay. I am especially grateful to Alyson Campbell and Dirk Gindt for their meticulous engagement with this version. Conversations with Jim Hubbard , co-founder of the ACT UP Oral History Project, and Kendall Thomas, a member of the New York City AIDS Memorial board, provided invaluable insight into my early research. I would also like to thank Jessica Witkin at Moran Bondaroff gallery and Jacolby Satterwhite for kindly allowing me to reproduce an image from Reifying Desire 6: Island of Treasure. As well, I would like to thank Doug Wingo for granting me permission to include a rendering of the New York City AIDS Memorial.
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Arthur, M. (2018). AIDS Memorialisation: A Biomedical Performance. In: Campbell, A., Gindt, D. (eds) Viral Dramaturgies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70317-6_6
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