ABSTRACT
Robert Ariss - activist and academic - had a unique vision of HIV/AIDS. As an HIV seropositive individual for many years before his death on May 9, 1994, he was a full participant in, and critic of, the development of the gay community's response to the HIV epidemic both in Australia and internationally. Though Ariss' life is a definite presence in this study, Against Death: The Practice of Living with AIDS is not an autobiography. Instead, it is a unique and critical account of a public health crisis, a community's response, and the politics of sexuality. It was in Sydney, Australia, world-famous for its Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, that Robert Ariss lived and worked. It is his vision of that community - of its members infected with and affected by HIV - which is documented in this remarkable anthropological study. Yet the study's implications reach beyond Sydney to all communities living with HIV and AIDS.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part One|35 pages
The Anthropology of AIDS
chapter Chapter 1|12 pages
Introduction
chapter Chapter 2|21 pages
Governing AIDS: The State-Medicine-Community Triad
part Two|96 pages
The Tactics of Health and Illness
chapter Chapter 3|12 pages
Identifying the Subject: HIV-Antibody Testing as a Social Process
chapter Chapter 4|19 pages
Reconstructing Self and Others: Managing an HIV-Antibody Positive Status
chapter Chapter 5|24 pages
In Dialogue with Doctors: Aspects of a Medical “Creole”
chapter Chapter 6|19 pages
Beyond Medicine: Alternative Therapies for HIV
chapter Chapter 7|18 pages
Reinventing Death
part Three|69 pages
Discursive Strategies of Resistance