An "Open Mesh of Possibilities": Thinking Queerness with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Archive
URGENCY & LOSS
The devastation of the AIDS epidemic and the urgency of AIDS activism profoundly shaped Sedgwick’s thinking about queerness. Her concerns about the epidemic, and the role homophobia played in many social and political responses, were woven into her writing. In the late 1980s, her connection with the epidemic became much more personal when she formed close friendships with Michael Lynch and Gary Fisher, who were both living with AIDS. A few years later, when Sedgwick was diagnosed with breast cancer, her own struggles with debilitating illness and the very real possibility of death reshaped her relation to health, sickness, and mortality. These experiences, among others, shaped her research and her AIDS activism and breast cancer activism, which in turn informed her writing.
Photographic reproduction of Gary Fisher and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. No Date.
Fisher, Gary. Gary in Your Pocket: Stories and Notebooks of Gary Fisher. Edited by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Duke University Press, 1996.
Sedgwick and Gary Fisher met at the University of California, Berkeley, where Fisher was a graduate student and Sedgwick was a visiting professor. Fisher was a writer, diarist, and artist. In 1994, Fisher passed from AIDS at the age of 32, and Sedgwick became the executor of his literary estate. She edited portions of his journals, poems, and stories, which were published as Gary in Your Pocket. His artwork is the cover image. The Gary Fisher Papers are at the San Francisco Public Library’s James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center.
Facsimile of Eternity's White Flag – Before – / And God – at every Gate. July 3, 1988.
Sedgwick and Michael Lynch met at a conference in 1986. Lynch was an activist, writer, poet, and professor living in Toronto. His writing and teaching were integral to the rise of gay studies in Canada, and his activism helped found or shape Toronto-based gay liberation and AIDS advocacy organizations. In 1991, Lynch passed from AIDS at the age of 46. This collage shows the pair at the grave of Emily Dickinson, whose poetry they both loved. Sedgwick included an image of this collage in her essay “White Glasses,” which celebrates her and Lynch’s friendship and meditates on living with illness.
“Day of Desperation” Sticker Sheet. Circa 1991. Created by ACT UP.
Founded in 1987, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is a self-described activist group that is “united in anger” and “committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis” (https://actupny.com/). This sticker sheet is for the “Day of Desperation” protest. ACT UP’s pink triangle symbol purposefully inverts the downward-pointing pink triangle used in Nazi concentration camps to mark “sexual deviants”.
Hand-drawn map. No Date. Created by ACT UP Triangle.
While living in Durham, Sedgwick was deeply involved in the Triangle chapter of ACT UP. The map shows directions to an ACT UP Triangle meeting at Sedgwick’s Durham home. Other ACT UP materials are in Sedgwick’s archive.
“A Piece I Wrote for MAMM…” Printed by H.A. Sedgwick. December 22, 2000.
This page is from a draft of Sedgwick’s piece “Living with Advanced Cancer: Eve’s ABCs” for the breast cancer magazine MAMM. In it, she writes a vignette on living with advanced cancer for each letter of the alphabet. For the “Y” section, Sedgwick discusses how living with cancer shaped her thinking on AIDS, and vice versa. Sedgwick viewed her writing for MAMM as part of her breast cancer activism, which included personal research into chemotherapy’s cognitive side effects, also called “chemo brain”, before they were widely recognized.
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