Aesthetics of dissappearence and spectralization in gay representations of HIV/AIDS.

Abstract

This article interrogates the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the representations of gay AIDS patients during the 1980s and 1990s in the Anglo-Saxon context. In particular, making use of the derridian concept of spectrality, the text analyzes the counter-narrative strategies that various homosexual artists adopted to construct a narrative that escaped the logic of debilitation proposed by Jasbir Puar (2021). The text takes up the work of the American photographer Mark Morrisroe and the film of Blue by the celebrated director Derek Jarman, as examples of what I call "aesthetics of dissapearence". Through this conceptual framework, I will explore the narrative strategies that allow the performance of mourning without being thrown in its entirety to morbidity and death.