Against Mandatory Overcoming. Reconfigurations of AIDS Memory from the Global South: Forced Mourning, Homonormativity, Gentrification of the Imaginary and Imposed Masculinization

This article argues for the importance of revisiting and historicizing the AIDS crisis in order to challenge “post-AIDS” discourses (Walker) that have promoted a paradigm of historical overcoming and chronic self-management of the disease, which shifts the responsibility for care onto the individuals themselves, framed within a neoliberal and individualistic value system. As critically noted by authors such as Dion Kagan, Sarah Schulman, and Susan Sontag, such discourses tend to depoliticize sexuality, undermine collective memory, and justify the defunding of efforts to combat the virus under the illusion of technocratic progress. Based on these approaches, the article first analyzes the collective memory of the United States, shaped by processes of forced mourning and gentrification of the imaginaries in the service of imperialist interests. Next, it offers an overview of Latin American studies that, like those of Lina Meruane, have problematized the complications of globalization, particularly in contexts of imposed masculinization and new homonormativities. Finally, the article presents a contemporary reading of the post-crisis in Chile through Pablo Simonetti’s novel Los hombres que no fui, reflecting on the atmosphere of repression, exclusion, and erasure in which the memory of those who died from AIDS-related causes is presented.