ABSTRACT

This essay develops a theory of the visceral imagination by analyzing the first safe sex manual written in the age of AIDS—How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach. At the time of the manual’s publication in 1983, no one knew for certain what caused AIDS. Drawing on the transmission pathways of common sexually transmitted infections and through thick descriptions of the contact between bodily fluids and internal membranes, the manual’s authors, Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz, constructed a comprehensive, customizable AIDS prevention framework. In this essay, I argue that these descriptions stabilized the controversies surrounding AIDS transmission by activating what I call the visceral imagination. The visceral imagination supports speculative, non-technical arguments about health with localized, vivid portrayals of the body, its orifices, and its fluids. Analysis of this case study illustrates that the visceral imagination can resist universalizing, curative approaches to biomedical intervention by inviting non-experts to negotiate risk against personalized assessments of bodily permeability. More broadly, a theory of the visceral imagination productively extends recent rhetorical interests in viscerality by illuminating embodied, imaginative practices that queer, grassroots, and other subjugated rhetors might use to resist the homogenizing effects of dominant, normative health discourses.

摘要

本文通过分析艾滋病时代写的第一本安全性行为手册-如何在流行中进行性行为：一种方法，发展出一种内脏想象的理论。。在1983年出版该手册时，没人知道是什么原因导致了AIDS。该手册的作者Michael Callen和Richard Berkowitz利用常见的性传播感染的传播途径以及对体液和内膜之间接触的详尽描述，构建了一个全面的，可定制的AIDS预防框架。在本文中，我认为这些描述通过激发我所谓的内心想象力，稳定了围绕艾滋病传播的争议。内在的想象力通过对身体，孔口和液体的局部生动描述来支持关于健康的推测性非技术性论点。对这个案例研究的分析表明，内脏的想象力可以抵抗普遍性，邀请非专家针对个人通透性评估进行风险谈判，从而为生物医学干预提供有效的治疗方法。更广泛地讲，内脏想象的理论通过阐明体现出来的，富有想象力的实践，有效地扩展了内脏的最新修辞兴趣，这些实践使酷儿，基层和其他被屈服的修辞者可以用来抵制占主导地位的规范性健康话语的均质化作用。