The AIDS Memorial Quilt as Cultural Resistance for Gay Communities

Abstract

The AIDS Memorial Quilt, an historic fabric monument to many who have died of AIDS, originated within the gay community of San Francisco in 1987. This paper explores the quilt's inception as a response to discourses that developed with the appearance of the AIDS epidemic, discourses that promoted the further stigmatization and marginalization of gay men. I demonstrate that the images evoked within the quilt can be seen to counter and resist the condemning images of gay men constructed specifically within biomedical discourse about AIDS. The quilt's implications for certain gay communities are also discussed, including it's tendency to draw gay men out of physical and social isolation into a collective experience where the positive reconstruction of gay identity becomes possible.