ABSTRACT
Much of the early years of AIDS activism can be understood as a struggle between Eros and Thanatos. Eros, of course, was the Greek god of love; he represented a monumental generative force (Hendricks 1978). For Sigmund Freud, Eros came to represent a life force, a sexual pulse that inspired creativity and libido; Eros was a force capable of preserving life itself. Frankfurt school social theorist Herbert Marcuse (1955) suggests Eros can be understood as both sexuality and a sensual impulse aimed at personal care and utopian transformation. “Spiritual ‘procreation’ is just as much the work of Eros as is corporal procreation, and the right and true order of love,” Marcuse (1955, 193) writes. “The culture-building power of Eros is non-repressive sublimation; sexuality is neither defi ned from nor blocked in its objective; rather, in attaining its objective, it transcends it to others, searching for fuller gratifi cation.” Herein Eros can be understood as part of wanderlust. “The pleasure principle reveals its own dialectic,” Marcuse continues. “The erotic aim of sustaining the entire body as subject-object of pleasure calls for continual refi nement of the organism” (193).
