“What Should Have Been, But Sadly Wasn’t“. Commoning HIV/AIDS History in “Pose”

Abstract

Among the many (hi-)stories referenced in the streaming series Pose is an infamous public protest by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) where they inflated a large condom-shaped balloon over a US-senator’s house in 1991 to advocate against the stigmatization of people with HIV/AIDS. The bodies in action in Pose’s iteration in contrast to the ‘original’ are mostly not white. In light of a historicization of trans*- and queerness with its compulsory colonial and racist structuring, this text proposes commoning as a frame to interpret Pose. After elaborating on House-Ballroom Culture’s (the scene Pose is set in) ’disidentificatory’ (Muñoz) practices as commoning and ACT UP’s video activism as commons especially in relation to different/other temporalities, the text offers a close-reading of the episode featuring the protest. The text suggests this kind of commoning as forms of trans* politics that intervene into binary and linear notions of time, community and subjectivity.