Life in Translation

Activist Communities, Queer Media, and the Counterdiscourses of HIV and AIDS in Italy, 1983-1993

Abstract

This paper traces how, in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, overlapping groups of Italian activists and gay journalists exploited their transnational connections to gather, translate, and distribute vital information from organizations abroad. I argue that these actors harnessed the transnational circulation of HIV- and AIDS-related materials to produce a counterdiscourse in translation that confronted the serophobic rhetoric of the mass media and the absence of an effective national prevention campaign from the Italian state. Using archival evidence and oral testimony, I examine translations by gay journalists and media—including Babilonia, the most widely-read gay magazine in Italy, and Essepiù, a pamphlet for people with AIDS,—as well as activist groups, including the Associazione Solidarietà AIDS in Milan (ASA) in Milan, the network Lega Italiana per la Lotta contro AIDS (LILA), and the Circolo Mario Mieli in Rome. These translations offer evidence of a dynamic exchange of ideas and practices that transcends national boundaries and, in doing so, testifies to myriad possibilities, and sometimes limits, of cross-border solidarities between communities invested in the struggle against HIV and AIDS.