Open Access“My Proof of Life”: HIV as Reification of Black Metaphysics in Danez Smith’s Homie
Author(s) -
Toni R. Juncosa
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
452º f
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2013-3294
DOI - 10.1344/452f.2021.25.8
Subject(s) - optimism , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , queer , grief , constructive , metaphysics , sociology , reification (marxism) , psychoanalysis , gender studies , psychology , aesthetics , epistemology , social psychology , medicine , psychotherapist , philosophy , political science , politics , law , family medicine , process (computing) , computer science , operating system
Since its onset in the 1980s, literature has responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic with works that testify to the devastating loss imposed on millions of people worldwide. After the implementation of effective antiretroviral treatment (ART) in the mid-90s, however, contemporary experiences of HIV might be expected to diverge their attention from grief and mourning to more “positive” emotions. The aim of this paper is to consider such a potential paradigm shift among new generations of HIV+ people with access to ART. To do so, it explores Danez Smith’s lyric approach to a 21st-century racialized experience of HIV, attempting to read it as constructive rather than destructive, without leaving intersectionality aside, in light of both Afropessimism and Queer Optimism.