Bearing Witness: Gay Men's Health Crisis And The Politics Of Aids - Softcover

Kayal, Philip M

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813317290 ISBN 13: 9780813317298

Publisher: Routledge, 1993

Synopsis

BEARING WITNESS IS A STORY ABOUT HOPE, a statement of faith in the human spirit. By dint of circumstance, it is two stories rolled into one. On the one hand, it is the tale of how volunteerism became the most necessary and reliable response to the political problems caused by AIDS and, on the other, it is a chronicle of how the gay community mobilized itself in the service of transformation to contain and resolve the social, psychological, and spiritual issues that the disease raised.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The untold story in the AIDS crisis is that of the mobilization of the gay community. Bearing Witness is a study of how a community-based initiative - Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York - overcame the formidable obstacles of homophobia and fear of AIDS, and the resulting lack of an adequate response from political and health organizations. Philip Kayal shows how volunteers at Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) confront their deepest fears about being homosexual. Rather than shun People with AIDS, they identify with them and neutralize the immobilizing power of homophobia. The volunteers have the courage to bear witness to the suffering of People with AIDS, suffering that in many ways is their own. Kayal explores the why and how of the gay community response to AIDS from his perspective as both a sociologist and GMHC volunteer. The author's own experience allows him to illuminate the social and political meanings of volunteerism by showing how gay/AIDS volunteerism is radical political and religious work. Through collective altruism, GMHC helps to integrate the gay community and establish new concepts of what is sacred. In Bearing Witness, Kayal explores the relationship between personal motives for volunteering and the broader political, social, and religious contexts in which People with AIDS have been largely abandoned. He shows how the mixing of morals, medicine, and American volunteer ideology sets both the tone of the politics of AIDS and influences the evolution of volunteer organizations such as GMHC. AIDS brings that which is deeply private into the public domain, and Kayal offers a compelling analysis of this intersection in his new study of gay/AIDS volunteerism.

From Publishers Weekly

Kayal, professor of sociology at Seton Hall University (N.J.), volunteered from 1983 to 1986 at Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City, and his experience in this pioneer mobilization against AIDS informs his disorganized but sometimes insightful book about volunteerism and cultural transformation. While Kayal offers a first-person account, his analysis is primarily sociological, and his history of GMHC is rather sketchy. He praises gay volunteerism because it is a means of self-affirmation, just as the term "People with AIDS" is more humanizing than the term "AIDS victims." However, his castigation of the mainstream media for ignoring the "remarkable contribution of the gay community to the care of People with AIDS" seems dated. Kayal warns that "Gays need to claim AIDS again" because democratization of the disease will result in a diminution of gay identity that has arisen in response to the epidemic, and that community-based agencies like GMHC may lose their autonomy. Criticizing activists like playwright Larry Kramer for "fighting hate with hate," Kayal argues for recognition that gay volunteerism is a way to join "the sacred, the political and the personal."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0813317290
• ISBN 13: 9780813317298
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300