Boat Trip

DM: As we were saying, if we're going to talk about audience, why don't you say what you might be wanting by presenting this text to an American Imago audience.

GB: It's interesting that the question is formulated in terms of “What Do I Want?” rather than figured around problems of audience in general, which is what most of my work is about anyway. I want to resist answering the question: “What do I want?” in relation to an Imago audience. In general, I think I have a political agenda which compels me to speak about AIDS in particular ways and put that out there in the world to help foster discussions and change the kinds of discussions that have happened around AIDS historically.

My hopes around publishing this piece in Imago are the same in this instance. I'm interested in the context… Now that I've resisted, I'll answer the question. I'm interested in Imago specifically because of the particular psychoanalytic reading of certain discursive formations which is available in Imago. Specifically, I'm interested in modes of address in relation to discussions around AIDS. I'll try to be more specific than that.

I'll do it by way of an example. What I'm most interested in now is the figure of the AIDS hero which surfaces in new film productions like Jonathan Demme's “Philadelphia” or Coppola's—as I imagine it—project called “The Cure,” which has just been put on the shelf, though he was working on it for a while. I'm interested in the figure of the AIDS hero, a protagonist who faces AIDS bravely and triumphs in particular circumstances. In “Phil” it's a person with AIDS who wins a case

against his employer who has fired him when it is learned that he has AIDS.

I'm not against this formation—AIDS hero—necessarily, since it's something I and a lot of other people fought for, but I have certain questions about it. As a person with AIDS, I want to look at and pose a certain set of questions