DEMONSTRATING ACT UP: THE ETHICS, POLITICS, AND PERFORMANCES OF AFFINITY

Demonstrating ACT UP: The Ethics, Politics, and Performances of Affinity

Dedication

• This work is dedicated to those in ACT UP who passed away, specifically Raymond Robert Navarro, Katrina Haslip, and Carmen Royster.
• It is also dedicated to the members who stayed and shared their stories and materials.
• Finally, it's dedicated to students at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Barnard College, and to the author's daughter, Ruby Rae Spiegel, who inherited the name of Ray Navarro.

Acknowledgements

• Gratitude is expressed to Barbara Browning for her intellectual investment.
• Thanks to Ann Pellegrini for introducing the author to Foucault and Freud.
• Acknowledgments to José Esteban Muñoz, Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen, and André Lepecki for their guidance.
• Gratitude to Barbara Kirschenblatt Gimblett, Tavia N’yongo, Karen Shimakawa, Bob Vorlicky, and Ted Ziter.
• Thanks to Patty Jang, Laura Fortes, and Noel Rodriguez for administrative support.
• Acknowledgment to the Women and Performance Collective, including Pamela Cobrin, Patricia Clough, Danielle Goldman, Alex Pittman, and Jeanne Vaccaro.
• Thanks to Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard for their support and conversations about ACT UP.
• Acknowledgment to Daniello Cacace at the ACT UP Oral History Project.
• Thanks to Andrew Miller for his support.
• Gratitude to colleagues from NYU: Nikki DeBlosi, Jenn Joy, Glenn Kessler, Sarah Kozinn, Jill Lane, Megan Nicely, Ariel Osterweiss, Noémie Solomon, and Aniko Szucs.
• Thanks to the team at Vectors for their help with Scalar: Steven Anderson, Craig Dietrich, Erik Loyer, and Tara McPherson.
• Acknowledgment to Marcial Godoy, Niki Kekos, Marlène Ramirez-Cancio, and Diana Taylor at the Hemispheric Institute for Politics and Performance.
• Special thanks to Alexei Taylor for his technical and design skills.
• Gratitude to the staff at the NYU digital studio: Terrell Johnson, Richard Malenitza, and Jennifer Vinopal.
• Thanks to Karen Scott Dennis, Lynne Kwalwasser, Sherri Rosenberg, Sarah Treem, and Kathryn Williams.
• Acknowledgment to Julie Tolentino, Lola Flash, Zoe Leonard, Patricia Navarro, Catherine Gund, and Aldo Hernandez.
• Gratitude to Joy Episalla, Barbara Hughes, James Baggett, Risa Denenberg, Michael Nesline, Avram Finkelstein, Robert Vazquez-Pacheco, Heidi Dorow, Maria Maggenti, Jim Eigo, Ron Goldberg, Duncan Osborne, and Sarah Rafsky.

Abstract

• The dissertation argues that ACT UP/New York revised the idea of affinity and demonstrated that political performance could catalyze emotional bonds.
• Affinity provided a framework for recognizing the heterogeneity of its members. Techniques of affinity assisted one another during acts of civil disobedience.
• Activists circumvented the stigmatization of the ill from 1987 to 1996.
• The introduction is a genealogy of affinity as a metaphor, theoretical domain, and political strategy, from the eighteenth century to the present.
• It argues that ACT UP adapted affinity as enacted and mobile practices of collectivity among its members.
• The four chapters draw upon cultural artifacts of AIDS activism, queer and disability studies, feminist scholarship, archival and oral history studies, and performance studies.
• Chapter 1: Affinity is personal, discussing Ray Navarro's Equipped (1990).
• Chapter 2: Affinity is political, recounting the public funerals produced by the ACT UP affinity group The Marys.
• Chapter 3: Affinity is philosophical, recalling Gran Fury’s poster project The Four Questions.
• Chapter 4: Affinity is technical, engaging the ACT UP Oral History Project’s interview form and its digital architecture.
• Concludes by observing the circulation of affinity and how it allowed us to enact an ethics of collective care.