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By analyzing two novels The Story of the Night (1996) and The Blackwater Lightship (1999) by the Irish writer Colm Tóibín, this article proposes the concept of the sick body as an “organic allegory.” Although both novels are set in different places at different times (Argentina in the 1980s and Ireland in the 1990s), they build their stories around a main character who lives with AIDS. The “organic allegory” refers to a discursive-stylistic strategy that establishes a political connection between the personal drama of the dying body and the social framework in which the story takes place. In this way, this article aims to reveal the political-corporeal dimension of these novels and to empower the body as highly political device used in literary production, both conceptually and discursively. By addressing an individual physical tragedy as one of the elements of the parallel, Tóibín’s texts provide to the social drama a carnal dimension, a corporeal way to experience a political, cultural, and economic transition. Through a comparative analysis and close-reading, the examination of both texts unveils the potential of (sick) bodies as formal devices to “understand” and present a political statement.

The Political Embodiment of AIDS: Between Individual and Social Bodies in Colm Tóibín’s The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship