Illness: A More Onerous Citizenship?1
| Author | L. J. Moran |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1988.tb01760.x |
| Published date | 01 May 1988 |
| Date | 01 May 1988 |
REPORTS
OF
COMMITTEES
ILLNESS:
A
MORE
ONEROUS CITIZENSHIP?’
SINCE
its invention
in
1892;
the image of “the homosexual”, and,
in its earlier forms, “the sodomite” and “the invert”, has been
dominated by a fixation with an idea of the sexual as a realm
of
danger. In the social production
of
such images exaggeration and
violence have been and continue
to
be
essential components. The
excess
of
the discourse works towards the production of the image
of the homosexual as an immense power, which emerges in many
guises. As a state
of
being, homosexual was and still is thought and
said to be a condition “worse than death.” The homosexual can
destroy the nation ~tate,~ cause earthquakes4 and change weather
pattern^.^
At the core
of
the image of the homosexual is violence and it is
here that the notion of death enters the discourse. Death is a figure
of
excess that is embroidered into the social production
of
the idea
of
homosexuality, an immoderate connection in which homosexual
equals death. This violence at the heart
of
the dominant formation
of homosexuality is required in the production of homosexual as a
discrete sexuality. It works to produce and sustain separation. The
homosexual emerges as an image
of
radical difference, of otherness.
Otherness demands sensationalism. Its institutionalisation demands
obsession. The House of Commons Social Services Select Committee
draws attention to this politics
of
a discourse
of
sexuality in
observing that “AIDS has become the hook on which to hang the
paranoias
of
late twentieth-century life.”6 “Homosexuality” is one
of the discursive formations, here called “paranoias,”’ which are
brought to bear upon the production of knowledge of HIV/Aids.
Social Services Select Committee, House of Commons,
Problems Associated with
Aids, Volumes
I, II
and
III,
(1987).
The Government’s reply to the Select Committee’s
report (Volume
l),
was presented in January
1988:
Department
of
Health and Social
Security,
Problems Associated with Aids, Response
by
the Government to the Third
Re ortfrom the Social Services Select Committee, Session 1986-7,
(1988).
?J. Weeks,
Sex
Politics and Society
(1981).
Chaps.
6
and
8.
P. Devlin,
The Enforcement of
Morah
(1955),
Chap.
1.
‘
A remark attributed to the Emperor Justinian in H.
L.
A. Hart,
Law, Liberty and
Morality
(1963),
p.
50.
li
In a recent news report about the pop star George Michael, which involved his
friendship with two gay men, we were informed that ‘The sub tropical island [Bermuda],
a favourite haunt of showbiz stars, was lashed by winds and the temperature was down to
50.
But
as
George’s Right took
off
[with the two gay men], the clouds vanished with him
and the island was suddenly basking in warm sunshine”,
M.
Hamilton and T. Willows,
“Jilted George Flees with Gays”,
News ofthe World
(January
3,
1988)
p.6.
’
The politics of Aids has been marked with an second infatuation concerned with
origins.
This
infatuation is a figure in a belief system in which the first moment of
recognition marks the essential truth. It is a figure through which the accidental is
venerated as the absolute, where effect is misrecognised as cause. It is in the context of
this system
of
belief that the accidental discovery
of
the Aids syndrome amongst a group
of
gay men in
Los
Angeles is celebrated as representing an eternal truth as to the nature
of
the illness.
For
an analysis
of
this aspect
of
the politics of Aids see C. Patton,
Sex and
Germs
(1985).
Supra
note one
Volume
I,
Report,
p.lvii, para.
165.
343
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