They are “liberated from history.”

If you didn’t get a chance to attend Dr. Michelle Abates talk on Wednesday, February 20^th at SDSU’s Love Library, then you missed a great talk on queer futurity and “queer retrosity.” Dr. Abate began her talk, “Out of History: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, the 1980s, and the Reclamation of a Lost Past,” by first situating the novel in queer young adult genre and then in the history at the center of the plot.

The author tells us, “It was hard to be gay in the 80s. It wasn’t safe to be gay in the 80s.” Abate clarifies misconceptions about the AIDS crisis by underscoring America’s response to the many lives lost as the government failed to act. She notes that “AIDS was a pivotal social issue in 1987.” While politicians such as Pat Buchannan blamed the victims of this crisis with judgmental comments, “Those poor homosexuals—they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution,”[1] organizations like ACT UP moved to educated America.

Abate notes that while the AIDS epidemic is a central part of the time in which Sáenz’s novel is set, to make it the focal point opens Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe up to what Sedgwick defines as a “paranoid reading.” Therefore, according to Abate, a reparative reading of Sáenz’s novel surprises us by imagining a more utopian past through what she calls “queer retrosity.” She goes on to say that the novel “upends our preconceptions” and therefore, Ari and Dante are “liberated from history.” 

(KT)

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[1] https://thinkprogress.org/flashback-buchanan-aids-is-natures-awful-retribution-against-homosexuality-2049a2734cfb/