Talkin' 'Bout Meta-Generation: ACT UP History and Queer Futurity

The transmission of ACT UP's movement histories is indispensable to the potential for what Jose Esteban Munoz calls "queer futurity," or "a temporal arrangement in which the past is a field of possibility in which subjects can act in the present in the service of a new futurity." Roger Hallas argues that ACT UP's material and visual archive alone cannot guarantee such transmission; ACT UP's histories must be discussed if they are to be preserved and put in the service of AIDS activism today, and this requires intergenerational dialogue. Establishing the grounds for such dialogue necessitates a look at the framing of generational relations. In thinking about the transmission of ACT UP's histories, how does one address relationality without falling prey to rhetorical pitfalls, nor conceding a liberal optimism that disavows difference, generational or otherwise? The author proposes the term "meta-generation" to describe a radically alternative arrangement of generational relations present in ACT UP Philadelphia. He uses the term "meta-generation" to define the particular crosshatching of intergenerational and multigenerational dynamics at work in ACT UP Philadelphia's organizing culture, historically and presently. In reflecting on ACT UP's 25th anniversary, the author suggests that one needs a "critical nostalgia" regarding not just what histories people tell but how this very telling structures the rules of engagement between queer leftist generations. He argues for a meta-generational approach to connecting ACT UP's past with the current AIDS movement, and the potential of a queer future, by recognizing the multiple histories and presents available as political resources. (Contains 26 notes.)