Viral Cultures: Activist Archiving in the Age of AIDS

by Marika Cifor

Delves deep into the archives that keep the history and work of AIDS activism alive
  Serving as a vital supplement to the existing scholarship on AIDS activism of the 1980s and 1990s, Viral Cultures is the first book to critically examine the archives that have helped preserve and create the legacy of those radical activities. Marika Cifor charts the efforts activists, archivists, and curators have made to document the work of AIDS activism in the United States and the infrastructure developed to maintain it, safeguarding the material for future generations to remember these social movements and to revitalize the epidemic’s past in order to remake the present and future of AIDS.  Drawing on large institutional archives such as the New York Public Library, as well as those developed by small, community-based organizations, this work of archival ethnography details how contemporary activists, artists, and curators use these records to build on the cultural legacy of AIDS activism to challenge the conditions of injustice that continue to undergird current AIDS crises. Cifor analyzes the various power structures through which these archives are mediated, demonstrating how ideology shapes the nature of archival material and how it is accessed and used. Positioning vital nostalgia as both a critical faculty and a generative practice, this book explores the act of saving this activist past and reanimating it in the digital age.  While many books, popular films, and major exhibitions have contributed to a necessary awareness of HIV and AIDS activism, Viral Cultures provides a crucial missing link by highlighting the powerful role of archives in making those cultural moments possible. 

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, History, LGBT

308 pages, Paperback

Published June 7, 2022

Reviews

[The Atlantic]

"In 'Viral Cultures,' an archivist’s work of scholarship, Cifor demonstrates how essential archives were to recovering and telling stories about HIV/AIDS, even as so many of the activists and artists chronicling the virus’s effects were lost to it. She also implores readers to think critically about how they remember the work of organizations such as ACT UP." — Joseph Osmundson

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...

[Finnoula · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think theory books about the queer community and communications and archives are cool. One of the things I like from this book is the concept of vital nostalgia. Which is the harnessing of information from the past to re-politicize people. The work VisualAIDS and the Fales library is important AIDS care work in the field I’m in of HIV prevention and health navigation. Reminding people that the crisis is still happening is so important! Anyway, great theory book and it’s literally my special interests all balled up and thrown at me!