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The Person with AIDS: Graphic Humor and Graphic Illness

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Eighties People

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Abstract

“Person with AIDS” is an unwieldy expression that does not match the catchy simplicity of the other 1980s objects of knowledge. Even the media-friendly abbreviation “PWA,” putting an acronym inside another acronym, leaves us with a confusing amount of condensation. In fact, acronyms abound in AIDS discourse during the decade: HTLV-III, GRID, AIDS, LAV, ARC, AZT, HIV, ARV, IDAV, ACIDS, CAID, WOG, ACT UP, GMHC, KS, PCP, CDC.1 Who is this new individual that he or she must be so carefully veiled behind a thicket of abbreviated letters? Even this central figure “AIDS” is not, as Susan Sontag points out, the name of one univocal disease, but rather an acronym that represents a spectrum of unnaturally bordered illnesses, the “condition called AIDS.”2 I begin this chapter with the linguistic abbreviations that both center and obscure the conversation about AIDS and PWAs. The history of AIDS acronyms is a history of negotiations between the medical, media, and activist communities, each of which must balance the need to be descriptive with sensitivity in labeling new individuals. This is evident in discourse around photographs of PWAs that appeared in news media, which scholars and activists criticized for mainly focusing on tropes of victimization. After examining this history, I turn to a less-discussed medium of visually representing AIDS—comics art.

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Notes

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  1. Kevin L. Ferguson
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© 2016 Kevin L. Ferguson

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Ferguson, K.L. (2016). The Person with AIDS: Graphic Humor and Graphic Illness. In: Eighties People. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137584342_4

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