ABSTRACT
There is not one history of AIDS. Just as we each have our own personal history of acquaintance with HIV, so each group has its own diary of significant events, its own gallery ofhero(in)es and hate figures, its own political agenda. The events around which medical histories (e.g., Siegal and Siegal, 1983; Cahill, 1983, especially Part 1; Connor and Kingman, 1988) are woven record the growth of expert, medical knowledge. Its heroes - mostly masculine - are the scientists, and its agenda is medical control of the epidemic. State histories (e.g., Nichols, 1989; Strong and Berridge, 1990) are punctuated by the moves of governments. They have few individual heroes, but are populated by public institutions and the pronouncements ofpublic figures. Their agenda, disguised in academic 'objectivity', is the rationalisation ofAIDS: its reduction to an exercise in liberal policy-making. The gay communities have, as a group, the longest history of engagement with the problems ofHIV and - consequently or contingently - the most fragmented view of the history of the epidemic (see, for example, Shilts, 1987; Crimp, 1989; Watney, 1987).
