Representing AIDS’ Invisible Subjects: Iris De La Cruz and the Historical Intersectional-Recovery Imperative

Abstract

There is a particular impetus to consider the history of the US AIDS epidemic through an intersectional lens, given that the inequities structuring the early years of the crisis continue to be reproduced in the popular imagination of its history. Iris De La Cruz (1953-1991) is often mobilized in this context as an example of the diversity of AIDS activism as well as of the epidemic’s disproportionate toll on marginalized groups. However, this framing, though well-intentioned, positions De La Cruz’s AIDS diagnosis as the entry point to her life and historical significance. Further, by identifying marginalized women with their serostatus, it privileges oversimplified associations over self-identification and historical specificity, emptying the lives of women with AIDS of individuality. Overall, narratives of De La Cruz as an AIDS fighter, activist, and simply as a woman with AIDS disregard the rest of her vibrant life and reveal nothing about her that could not have been said in advance.