Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS
Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS
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移动政治：情感和 ACT UP 对抗艾滋病的斗争
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发表时间：
2011
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通讯作者：
Martha Copp
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作者：
Martha Copp
黛博拉·古尔德的这本书是一本优美的书，描述了美国艾滋病直接行动主义从20世纪80年代中期的兴起到90年代初的衰落。ACT UP的故事，工作的中心焦点，阐明了艾滋病流行和女同性恋，男同性恋，双性恋和变性（LGBT）社区在过渡的关键时刻的政治动态的复杂历史。该组织成立于里根时代的保守派反弹时期，并在克林顿早期的LGBT政治保守转向中活跃（优先考虑兵役等问题），该组织的对抗策略，激进话语和政治成功证明了某种异常。解释这种异常现象是古尔德的核心关注点，在这样做的过程中，她为解决社会运动研究中的影响和情绪的重要性提供了一个令人信服的论据，并提供了一个细致入微的概念框架。古尔德提出了对“情感本体论”的需求，他引入了情感惯习的概念，作为强调情感的社会维度的一种方式。关注ACT UP和更大社会中的动态，她追溯了情感和情感的暗流，这些暗流允许有争议的艾滋病行动主义的出现和随后的衰落。正如她在导言中所解释的，情绪惯习通过一种“情绪教育学”来运作，在意识层面之下，建立一个“感受什么和如何感受的模板”，使一些感受自然化，并抑制另一些感受（第34页）。继皮埃尔·布迪厄之后，古尔德谨慎地认识到惯习的稳定力量，但她所描述的情感惯习不是静态和封闭的，而是充满张力和变化的。例如，在第一部分中，作者分析了20世纪80年代初首次报告艾滋病病例后在LGBT社区中传播的矛盾情绪，包括骄傲、恐惧、悲伤、内疚、羞耻、渴望被接受，以及一种初期的愤怒，这种愤怒的动员能力仍然太弱。在此背景下，最高法院于1986年在鲍尔斯诉哈德威克案（Bowers v. Hardwick）中的裁决，维护了各州在赤裸裸的同性恋恐惧症中将鸡奸定为犯罪的权力，这是一个“道德冲击”，从根本上改变了LGBT社区的情感习性，使人们对政府在艾滋病问题上无所作为的愤怒具体化，并为更具争议性的政治打开了情感上的可能性。古尔德通过将采访、运动文件、公开演讲以及LGBT和主流媒体对疫情的报道编织在一起，来呈现这种情感的星座。事实上，她对证据的使用值得注意，不仅因为它的广度，而且因为她整理证据的方式，揭示了通常难以记录的东西：压抑的情绪，情感状态，以及丧失行动可能性。因此，她对比了，例如，在20世纪80年代初，主要的社区和活动家对少数最初呼吁公民不服从的反应-劝阻这种行动，捍卫政府，并呼吁人们控制自己的愤怒-与哈德威克之后的人，这发现了一个新的共鸣与案件引发的广泛愤怒。在Hardwick之后的一年里，活动家们成立了ACT UP。在本书的第二部分和第三部分，古尔德追溯了这些活动家所做的“情感工作”，最初发现他们的要求和破坏性策略得到了接受;后来，情况就不那么好了。这个故事的另一个关键转折点是比尔·克林顿的当选，他承诺只要我们行为端正，同性恋者将得到更大的社会接受。事实上，虽然作者小心翼翼地避免在特定的情绪和特定的政治策略之间建立直接的因果关系，但在整本书中，作者阐述了一种中心张力，一种是主要由愤怒推动的有争议的直接行动主义，另一种是通过既定的政治机构运作的行动主义，反映了（除了其他感觉之外）对社会接受的矛盾希望和对同性恋/酷儿差异的某种羞耻。因此，她描绘了情感习性的第二次转变，她记录了越来越多的政治和LGBT社区领袖的合唱，他们认为ACT UP的策略适得其反，不合理，幼稚或过时。在这种不祥的背景下，古德还追溯了在这个群体中，一种无处不在的，但普遍未被承认的对家人和朋友死亡人数不断上升的悲伤，以及对找到治愈方法的机会越来越绝望||
Deborah Gould’s volume is a beautifully written account of direct-action AIDS activism in the United States from its emergence in the mid-1980s through its decline in the early 1990s. The story of ACT UP, the central focus of the work, illuminates the complex history of both the AIDS epidemic and the political dynamics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities at a key moment of transition. Founded during the conservative backlash of the Reagan era and active through the conservative turn in LGBT politics of the early Clinton years (with the prioritization of questions like military service), the group’s confrontational tactics, radical discourse, and political successes prove something of an anomaly. Explaining this anomaly is Gould’s central concern, and in doing so, she offers a compelling argument for the importance of addressing affect and emotion in the study of social movements, providing a carefully nuanced conceptual framework to do so. Positing the need for an “affective ontology,” Gould introduces the notion of emotional habitus as a way to highlight the social dimensions of feeling. Focusing on dynamics both within ACT UP and in the larger society, she traces the affective and emotional undercurrents that permitted the emergence and subsequent decline of contentious AIDS activism. As she explains in the introduction, an emotional habitus operates through a kind of “emotional pedagogy,” beneath the level of consciousness, establishing a “template for what and how to feel,” naturalizing some feelings and inhibiting others (p. 34). Following Pierre Bourdieu, Gould is careful to recognize the stabilizing force of habitus, but the emotional habitus she describes is not static and closed but rife with tensions and in flux. In Part I, for instance, the author analyzes the contradictory emotions that circulated in LGBT communities after the first reported cases of AIDS in the early 1980s, including pride, fear, grief, guilt, shame, a desire for acceptance, and an incipient anger, still too weak in its capacity to mobilize. Against this backdrop, the Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986, which upheld states’ authority to criminalize sodomy in starkly homophobic terms, came as a “moral shock” that fundamentally transformed the emotional habitus of LGBT communities, crystallizing anger at government inaction on AIDS and opening the emotional possibilities for a more contentious politics. Gould presents this constellation of feelings by weaving together interviews, movement documents, public speeches, and reports of the epidemic in both the LGBT and mainstream press. Indeed, her use of evidence is noteworthy not only for its breadth but also for the way she marshals it to reveal what is often difficult to register: repressed emotions, affective states, and foreclosed possibilities of action. She thus contrasts, for example, predominant community and activist responses to the few initial calls for civil disobedience in the early 1980s—discouraging such action, defending the government, and calling on people to reign in their anger—with those following Hardwick, which found a new resonance with the widespread outrage provoked by the case. In the year after Hardwick, activists founded ACT UP. In Parts II and III of the book, Gould traces the “emotional work” performed by these activists, initially finding receptiveness to their demands and disruptive tactics; subsequently, less so. Another key turning point in this story is the election of Bill Clinton, which promised greater social acceptance for gays and lesbians, provided we behave. Indeed, while careful to avoid drawing a direct causal link between particular emotions and specific political tactics, the author elaborates a central tension throughout the book between a contentious, direct-action activism, fueled primarily by anger, and an activism that operates through established political institutions, reflecting (among other feelings) an ambivalent hope for social acceptance and a certain shame about gay/queer difference. Thus mapping a second transformation of the emotional habitus, she documents a growing chorus of political and LGBT community leaders who dismissed ACT UP’s tactics as counterproductive, irrational, juvenile, or outdated. In this inauspicious context,Gouldalso traces how, within the group, an omnipresent though generally unacknowledged grief over the rising death toll of family and friends and a growing despair about the chances of finding a cure | |