Title: PhD Candidate
University: Carnegie Mellon University
Email: rmitchel@andrew.cmu.edu
Twitter: N/A
Website: N/A
Description of Work:
My research investigates the processes by which intimate experiences transform into publicly viable forms of argumentation. In particular, I’m interested in exploring how the sexual practices of gay men served as argumentative commonplaces and rhetorical topoi for the construction of safe sex manuals at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, before the discovery of HIV. My work has three threads: first, I study personal narratives told by gay men about their experiences with sex and illness; second, I perform close readings of safe-sex guidelines written by so-called non-expert gay men for other gay men; third, I chart the (dis)similiarities between these guidelines and the official guidelines released by medical authorities such as the CDC. This research will culminate in my dissertation project, tentatively titled Private Parts/Public Selves: The Co-Construction of Gay Safe Sex in the Time after AIDS. In this dissertation, I wish to expand work done in RHM as well as in feminist theory and queer theory concerning the distinctions between private, public, and technical spheres of argumentation. I argue that through attempting to chart the intertextual connections among embodied, intimate experiences, private conversation, medical discourse, and public knowledge, we can better understand the illusory (and often oppressive) distinctions between public and private forms of knowledge. Ultimately, I aim to intervene in traditional conceptualizes of phronesis, or practical wisdom, by explicitly examining how the most sheltered of human activities (e.g. sex, illness, and death) actually serve as powerful foundations for both political and social recognition.
Symposium Submission:
Discourses of disease: Credibility, expertise, and situated knowledge in early AIDS prevention initiatives
This paper charts the ways in which gay men medicalized their intimate experiences with sex and illness to construct speculative safe sex protocols for preventing the spread of AIDS before the discovery of HIV in 1984. Through examining the combination of medical knowledge and community sexual practice in Richard Callen and Michael Berkowitz’s 1983 safe sex manual, How to Have Sex in an Epidemic, this paper argues that the medical and social crises AIDS inspired razed traditional boundaries separating private and technical modes of argumentation, disrupting the expert/novice divide typical in medical interventions. By emphasizing behavioral modifications rather than medical cures, How to Have Sex in an Epidemic localized AIDS prevention within the gay community itself. Not only did these localized safe sex practices grant gay men a sense of agency in a time of great uncertainty but also underscored the importance of situated, community knowledge in the development of public health campaigns.
How to Have Sex in an Epidemic argued for the multifactorial theory of AIDS contraction. This theory postulated that AIDS resulted from a convergence of particular sexual behaviors and the accumulation of known sexually transmitted diseases, in particular cytomegalovirus (CMV). While this theory was ultimately debunked with the discovery of HIV, it represented a strategic approach to AIDS prevention that placed responsibility for curbing the spread of the epidemic squarely on the shoulders of gay men. To interrupt disease transmission, the multifactorial theory asked gay men to modify “what [they] do—not how often [they] do it nor with how many partners” (3). This focus on modifications to sexual practices was a radical departure from the directives provided by medical experts at the CDC, who officially recommended that “sexual contact should be avoided with persons known of suspected to have AIDS” (MMWR, 1983). Given the fact that there was no definitive test for AIDS in 1983, the CDC ostensibly recommended abstinence for all members of the gay community.
For many gay men, however, abstinence seemed at odds with the strides made during the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, which embraced gay sexuality as a marker of self-acceptance and community pride (Darsey, 1991). This paper argues that How to Have Sex in an Epidemic and the multifactorial theory it proposed were crafted to relieve some of the tensions between AIDS prevention and intimate manifestations of gay pride. While contemporary critics of the pamphlet believed that Callen and Berkowitz callously implicated AIDS victims in both contracting and transmitting the virus, I argue that through localizing their AIDS prevention efforts on modifiable sexual behaviors, the authors actually empowered gay men to take a more active role in protecting their health in the face of great medical uncertainty.
To assess the ways in which Callen and Berkowitz empowered gay men in their pamphlet, I perform a close reading of two approaches that legitimized the multifactorial theory: first, I catalogue the authors’ appeals to scientific ethos in their development of the multifactorial theory; second, I examine the processes by which Callen and Berkowitz medicalized sexual experiences to form generalized guidelines for AIDS prevention. Segal and Richardson (2003) note that members of the public believe in science for two interrelated reasons: “when science speaks” they explain, “it speaks through scientists….the credibility of an individual scientists is enhanced by his or her…ability to speak with the institutional sanction of science” (139). In other words, scientific ethos is realized through its embodiment in the scientist and reinforced by the scientist’s connection to abstract scientific authority. This dialectic between the scientist and the institution of science results in two rhetorical strategies for supporting the multifactorial theory: (1) references to individual scientists who support the reasoning behind the theory; and (2) explicit and implicit appeals to scientific consensus.
However, because AIDS’s true epidemiological profile was unknown, Callen and Berkowitz needed to manufacture consensus. The authors strove to manufacture consensus by establishing a knowledge base (Walton, 2008) for AIDS transmission that was at once in line with existing medical knowledge bases for sexually transmitted diseases as well as recognizable to non-expert gay men. This knowledge base took the form of generalizing accepted consequences of fluid transmission and placing them onto common gay sex practices. This paper argues that by applying general medical principles to sex practices particular to the gay community, How to Have Sex in an Epidemic established a knowledge base that is both recognizable as medically sound as well as adequately familiar to sexually active gay men. As a result, its recommendations were able to maintain an air of medical authority while still emphasizing their ease of application, which is essential for the persuasive force of medical arguments (Calsamglia, 2003).
My paper concludes by emphasizing the importance of community responses to medical crises and suggests that such crises represent moments where measures of medical authority can be contested and redefined. I argue that Callen and Berkowitz’s response to the AIDS crisis allows us to see the argumentative potential that local, intimate experiences have in the co-construction of medical knowledge. It also demonstrates some of the rhetorical approaches that non-expert community members can take to gain ethos in argumentative spheres that are traditionally marked by formal expertise, scholarly argumentation, and erudite vetting procedures (Goodnight, 2012). In sum, I argue that How to Have Sex in an Epidemic captures a seminal moment in gay history by demonstrating how gay men challenged top-down medical directives to craft a community-focused approach to AIDS prevention that attempted to stabilized both the social and medical controversies AIDS created.
This paper is part of my larger dissertation project titled Private Parts/Public Selves: The Co-Construction of Gay Safe Sex in the Time after AIDS. In this dissertation, I chart the ways in which intimate experiences with sex, illness, and death were transformed into argumentative topoi that influenced not only community knowledge surrounding AIDS and its victims but also steered the direction of AIDS research at large.
Works Cited
Callen, M., & Berkowitz, R. (1983). How To Have Sex In An Epidemic: One Approach. New York, New York: Tower Press.
Calsamiglia, H. (2003). Popularization Discourse. Discourse Studies, 5(2), 139–146.
Darsey, J. (1991). From “gay is good” to the scourge of AIDS: The evolution of gay liberation rhetoric, 1977‐1990. Communication Studies, 42(1), 43–66.
Goodnight, G. Thomas. “The Personal, Technical, and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry into the Art of Public Deliberation.” Argumentation and Advocacy 48.4 (2012): 198-210. Print.
Prevention of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS): Report of Inter-Agency
Recommendations. (1983). Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 32(8), 101–103.
Segal, J., & Richardson, A. W. (2003). Introduction. Scientific Ethos: Authority, Authorship, and Trust in the Sciences. Configurations, 11(2), 137–144
Walton, D. (2008). Informal logic: a pragmatic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.