UC Irvine

Fairies Wear Boots explores the imbrication of the early HIV/AIDS pandemic in the United States with queer identity. Responding to being labeled as abject—that which a majoritarian sphere casts out and denies a connection to—queer subjects have defiantly inhabited the abject and self-authored their stigmatized identities. But, how can this be done without reproducing the conditions of one’s expulsion in the first place? Looking at experimental autobiography, the early part of the AIDS epidemic as a historical setting in contemporary novels, and the artist Jerome Caja’s performance and self-depiction as an abject saint, I look to find ways of performing the abject that seek to expand the circle of inclusion rather than fighting for assimilation in a system that sees you as abject. Through examining how AIDS, homophobic violence and social expulsion form an oppositional, but fractured, identity, my intention is not to create a discourse of victimhood, but to think about how self-authoring one’s abject status holds a funhouse mirror up to the majoritarian sphere, and allows us to envision a more inclusive future.