French AIDS writing and the culture of redemption: A study of the literary response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in France

This dissertation examines literary responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in France from 1985 to the present. After a survey of the history of the epidemic and the general literary response to it in France, it discusses AIDS writing as a distinct period in the evolution of representations of gay men in French literature. It focuses specifically on autobiographical work by Renaud Camus, Herve Guibert, Pascal de Duve, Rene de Ceccatty, and Guillaume Dustan. It firstly inquires into what is specifically literary about their responses to the epidemic. It further considers the aesthetic and ethical relationship between AIDS writing and the long-standing autobiographical tradition of confession. The assumption that AIDS writing has a therapeutic function and that its value is to be found in a redemptive raison d'etre is drawn into question. This involves broadening the scope of Leo Bersani's term the culture of redemption. This study claims that a redemptive reading of AIDS writing is largely based in a condescending and negative vision of gay men. Furthermore, this reading distracts the reader from appreciating the reality of the experience of illness and devalues AIDS writing as a literary phenomenon. It fails to understand that many AIDS writers strongly identify with the process of writing as their primary mode of existence and that AIDS writing is often less a penance or cathartic purgation and more a combative and affirming means of self-expression.