"The new, sought for its own sake, a kind of laboratory product, petrified into a conceptual scheme, becomes in its sudden apparition a compulsive return of the old, not unlike that in traumatic neuroses...Faithlessness and lack of identity, pathic subservience to situations, are induced by the stimulus of newness, which as mere stimulus, no longer stimulates...The occultist draws the ultimate conclusion from the fetish-character of commodities: menacingly objectified labour assails him on all sides from demonically grimacing objects."
 
 

ARMANI™, GAULTIER™, GUCCI™, HIV™ are just some of the over-hyped designer labels that fags are ‘into’. HIV™ is a ‘must have’ haute couture accessory sought after by aspiring gay men who see ‘HIV+ status’ as just that: a status symbol, a form of economic, cultural and symbolic capital. The ‘HIV’ High Life offers many perks, pleasures, publications and products from the ‘HIV’ Culture Industry Shopping Malls.

The fetish-object ‘HIV’ is a paradigm example of what Karl Marx formulates as ‘commodity fetishism’. In a society in which the products of human Labour acquire the form of commodities, the crucial relations between people take on the form of relations between things, between commodities - instead of immediate relations between people, we have social relations between things. It is precisely this thing ‘HIV’ that stands in for human relationality. ‘HIV’ becomes the ventriloquist’s dummy through which the human subject mimics, believes, acts. Those that are ideologically interpellated as ‘HIV+’ become objectified: relating to others as a ‘thing’, as the commodity fetish object ‘HIV’. That is: ‘they’ no longer ‘believe’ but the ‘things’ themselves ‘believe’ for them. The point of Marx’s analysis is that the things (commodities like ‘HIV’) themselves stand-in the place of the human subject: it is as if all beliefs are embodied in the "social relations between things". Their ‘beliefs’ are embodied in ‘HIV’ Ideology which ‘speaks’ them. Why do many gay men ‘wear’ their custom-tailored ‘HIV+ status’ as a haute couture accessory? Because as a form of ‘drag’, the designer-label ‘HIV’ masks the ‘real-conditions’ of the ‘material-body’. The body’s ‘hidden history’ (multiple-STD’s, psycho-immuogenic illness and drug-use) that form the ‘AIDS-body’ are ‘erased’ (stifled facts) and ‘clothed’ by the haute couture garment - ‘HIV’. What is absurdly and wrongly termed ‘HIV dementia’ is an example of this clothing, masking. Pseudo ‘HIV dementia’ covers-up, ‘clothes’, veils, what is really contributing to dementia in PWA’s: long-term heavy recreational drug use, nutritional deficiencies, AZT (mono or with combo) and bone-pointing death-programming. The AIDS Memorial Quilt is like visceral VERSACE™ veneer veiling the venomous poison that drips from the fangs of the cunning ‘HIV Combo’ Corporate corpse collectors.

It is the ‘HIV Habitus’ which constitutes the (re)production of the ‘HIV’ Commodity Culture through mass media, welfare services, pharmaceutical industries, political lobby groups and lifestyles filtered via the ‘diagnosed’ consumers. Habitus may be understood as a social space, a structure that organizes, reproduces/disseminates cultural practices within a classified group of people. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu explains: "The habitus is not only a structuring structure, which organizes practices and the perception of practices, but also a structured structure: the principle of division into logical classes which organizes the perception of the social world is itself the product of internalization of the division into social classes. The habitus generates representations and practices which are always more adjusted than they seem to be to the objective conditions of which they are the product". The ‘HIV’ Culture Industry is largely marketed by petit-bourgeois empire-builders. The petite-bourgeoisie are found in the occupations involving presentation and representation (sales, marketing, advertising, fashion) as well as jobs in medical, charity and social assistance and in cultural production (media, journalism). One only has to scan the field of the ‘HIV’ Culture Industry (charity directors, journalists) to see that it is dominated by these dross petit bourgeois bureaucrats. Known as ‘need merchants’, sellers of ‘HIV’ related symbolic goods and services see themselves as models and as guarantors of the value of their products who ‘sell so well’ because they ‘believe’ in what they sell. Their ‘HIV Habitus Ideology’ (an internalized programme of predetermined and formulated judgements) is materialized in their ‘HIV’ manifestos which reek of reactionary conservatism and intellectual stagnation. The petit-bourgeois mentality of ‘narrowness’, ‘bigotry’, ‘petty-mindedness’ is the mind-set of the ‘HIV’ con-merchants whose stock-in-trade is to sell ‘HIV’ as a ‘house-hold name’ to ‘reach a wide audience’(something that ‘affects us all’): thus packaging ‘HIV’ as a ‘family concern’. They are the vendors who deceive the customer (only insofar as they deceive themselves) - but in the ‘belief’ that the product ‘HIV’ is ‘sincerely’ sold. Theodor Adorno sums this up: "The ungenuineness of the genuine stems from its need to claim, in a society dominated by exchange, to be what it stands for yet is never able to be". Just like the logo ‘HIV’.

According to Bourdieu the whole dynamics of consumption is primarily based on the strategies of distinction – of those representing ‘good’ or ‘legitimate’ taste. Buying ‘HIV+ status’ is seen as a chic ‘status symbol’ of the new petit-bourgeois fag life-style. Taste or consumer desire is the result of struggles between different class groups. The designer label HIV™ is something ‘they’ mimetically ‘wear’ with smug snide ‘pride’ ; many introducing themselves with the vulgar inanity: ‘Hello, I’m HIV’! (How many people do you know who introduce themselves with: ‘Hello, I’m HHV- 8’, ‘Hello, I’m Ebola virus’, ‘Hello, I’m KS’?) ‘HIV’ is predominantly marketed and sold to gay consumers. The New York Times (5 July,’96) reported: "It is almost impossible to pick up a gay magazine these days without seeing four page ads for Invirase...". Many gay men buy into ‘HIV’ because they see in this object of desire a reflection of themselves, as elective affinities, ‘feeling at home’ with ‘HIV’. Taste is what brings together things and people that ‘go together’. Many ‘diagnosed’ fags see ‘their HIV’ as ‘made for them’. Taste is a match-maker: ‘HIV’ is often perceived as an alter ego or idealized-partner. ‘GAY’™ identity is synonymous with ‘HIV’™ identity: they are ‘made for each other’, a ‘well-matched couple’. ‘HIV’ has become an object of narcissism and cultural capital for many fags. Like the possession of luxury goods, ‘HIV’ becomes the object of value that reflects-consolidates the owners’ (diagnosed) cultural status and symbolic power: one’s ‘HIV’ status becomes a register for one’s cultural (and even economic) value. When asked "What does HIV status mean to you?" - these were some of the replies: "With HIV, you become somebody - you get noticed", "It’s the done thing to be", "As the élite-set, you become part of a community and meet interesting people", "HIV is my security blanket - it keeps me warm, snug and cosy" and "I was nothing untill I was HIV": at The Landmark,’98.

Porn star, poof, prostitute, pop-singer, poet and self-propagandist Aiden Shaw™ has made his narcissistic self-love find its ‘mirroring’ in his object of desire, ‘HIV’: "And so I got HIV, just as I’d wanted. I laughed when I was told. It was such a relief. Every thing fell into place. The future was clear; there was no need to worry about a career or old age. My marginalization and self-image was distilled, purified. An HIV community materialized where the mythical gay one never had....so I hitched a ride with HIV." - POZ, November,’97. Aiden Shaw™ went shopping for a customized brand-label and bought ‘HIV’. Thus the brand-labels Aiden Shaw™ and ‘HIV’™ are ‘made for each other’. With Shaw™ and HIV™ it was ‘love at first sight’ - or love at first testing site. He said regarding one of his porn films in Attitude, February,1998: "In this video they were paying for my name on the box. I was a label". Shaw™ is now available under five brand labels: Porn Star, Pro Star, Pop Star, Poet Star, Poz Star. Shaw™ stated he will only ‘perform’ in porn films with other ‘positives’ setting up a sort of pernicious positive-porn apartheid. Shaw™ is reduced to the realm of reification and standardization: no longer ‘a self’ he takes his place as an over-priced, over- determined commodity object on a display rack waiting to be noticed, paid for, consumed and shitted-out. His identity lies in non-identity. Shaw™ and HIV™ have become objects of symbolic over-determination. Many fags want ‘to be noticed’ as both ‘GAY’ ™ and ‘HIV’™ which is like having a double noble-title. They become their own advertising agents and billboards for their consumer identities. It is not surprising that ‘GAY’ identity ‘goes hand in hand’ with ‘HIV’ identity: as consumer identities they both operate through the ‘world of appearances’. ‘GAY’ identity like ‘HIV’ identity is essentially role playing ‘make believe’ since both ‘perform’ at the level of mimetic representation. The petit-bourgeois credo: ‘His Home is His Castle’ becomes: ‘His HIV status is His Lifestyle’. ‘GAY’ (Subjectivity) and ‘HIV’ (Objectivity) are assemblages, collages, constructs, necessary illusions. Primarily no one is anything: everyone is nothing. Cultural analyst Mark Cousins on identity: "There is no such original thing such as identity: (where identity is considered to be the identity of one thing with itself).The psychoanalytical proposition is that the identity of a thing is first of all is a secondary thing; it is not what defines the essence or the pure interior of a subject: it is a secondary characteristic which is built upon the activity of identification. And the mechanism of identification is one that shows us that identity is something in which the thing is never identical to itself but is in fact always different from itself.." (lecture: 17th November, ’95, London). 

Thus, identity is a constructed and secondary characteristic - the primary characteristic is the act of identification. People identify with ‘HIV’ by treating it as a ‘mirror’; just like a fag who goes into a VERSACE™ store and picks up a garment and says : "Do you think that’s Me!" (identifying himself with the item). This is the mechanism of identification. So fags identify with the object ‘HIV’ as if it had always already come from ‘within’ them; not as an ‘exogenous infection’ but as an endogenous projection. Behind this idealized-image of ‘HIV’ will always be the possibility of it breaking down (especially in the context of the Eleopulos exquisite deconstruction of ‘HIV’) As we are made up of internalized objects (like ‘HIV’) then such objects will be projections of subjects, of us. This is why many fags become hurt, defensive and angry (responding with abject horror) when you tell them that ‘HIV’ does not exist: -since this implies that they do not exist. Their identity is found in non-identity. There is no clear distinction, demarcation between the subject and object: human subjects are arrangements of internalized objects. Thus objects become projections of subjects: the ‘HIV’object thus becomes fused with the ‘GAY’ subject. The status of the subject itself (the subject of the signifier ‘HIV’) is that of a ‘virtual image’: it exists only as a virtual point that is never present in ‘reality’ but in some virtual void of science fiction. As ‘HIV’ is an error, a mistake, an abstraction, then the subject that ‘identifies’ with ‘HIV’ is thus identifying with an error, a mistake: hence the subject’s identity is always already null and void. The subject that seeks ‘reflection’ in ‘HIV’ becomes the smashed mirror of misrecognition. Abject ‘HIV’ is the ‘black spot’, a ‘black hole’, that cannot reflect.

Cultural theorist, Slavoj Zizek pinpoints the fact that people know that objects such as ‘HIV’ are necessary illusions but still hold on to them: "We have established a new way to read the Marxian formula ‘they do not know it, Shaw™ is now available under five brand labels: Porn Star, Pro Star, Pop Star, Poet Star, Poz Star but they are doing it’: the illusion is not on the side of knowledge, it is already on the side of realty itself, of what people are doing. What they do not know is that their social reality itself, their activity, is guided by an illusion, by a fetishistic inversion. What they overlook, what they misrecognize, is not the reality but the illusion which is structuring their reality, their real social activity. They know very well how things really are, but still they are doing it as if they did not know". They know very well that ‘HIV’ does not exist, but still they are believing as if they did not know. The subjugated ‘HIV’ subject is the slave-object of science fiction. Joining in the ‘collective belief’ of ‘HIV’ consumer fetishism constitutes, reproduces and legitimates the illusion of ‘HIV’ Cultural Identity. Bourdieu explains: "Culture is a stake which, like all social stakes, simultaneously presupposes and demands that one take part in the game and be taken in by it; and interest in culture, without which there is no race, no competition, is produced by the very race and competition which it produces. The value of culture, the supreme fetish, is generated in the initial investment implied by the mere fact of entering the game, joining in the collective belief in the value of the game which makes the game and endlessly remakes the competition for the stakes". Fags join "in the collective belief in the value of the game" of virtual ‘HIV’ testing thus endlessly promoting the value of the ‘HIV’ culture industry which is geared to mimetic regression and to the insidious manipulation of repressed impulses to copy and regurgitate ‘HIV’ life-style tracts. From science journals to the gay press tripe ‘HIV’ related science fiction is sold to a largely regressive and uncritical consumership.

Selling and Buying ‘HIV’ is an industry all of its own where the pharmaceutical industry and the culture industry have marketed a highly profitable and desirable product. Dr. Milo Gibaldi wrote in his essay ‘The Commerce of HIV Disease’: "From the outset it was a business...Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded more than 1,500 patents related to HIV and AIDS. Sales of diagnostic and monitoring kits in 1995 were $186 million, and analysts project a 50 percent increase by the year 2000...Cumulative worldwide sales of AZT to date: $2.5 billion..." One reason that ‘HIV’ testing has become in vogue and pushed is precisely because the ‘HIV’ Services are facing Titanic cut backs; notably in London the Terence Higgins Trust, The London Lighthouse have hit the iceberg while the HIV Project has sunk. Recently Crusaid, London ran the ichor (blood like flowing) ‘Try this HIV test?’ campaign adverts (at an obscene cost of £260,000) in The Pink Paper,Boyz, Axiom, Attitude, Gay Times and Thud. The fag press are greedy enough to take ‘HIV’ blood-money advertising revenue without having the integrity to inform their readers as to the non-specificity of these pastiche ‘HIV antibody’ tests. The fag press endlessly-ape the vacuous ‘HIV’ waffle offal because it is ‘easy listening’ and ‘tailor made’ for their retard readers. The kindergarten-babble of ‘HIV’ journalism is on the same level as a syrupy Eurovision Song Contest ditty: easy to hum along to. The metaphor of muzac aptly mimics the intellectually barren discourse of ‘HIV science’: ‘facile effects’, ‘banal’, ‘dross’, ‘undemanding’, ‘superficial’, ‘frivolous’, ‘repetitious’, ‘mundane’, ‘bilge’, ‘trite’, ‘light’. In contrast Dr David Roscoe (Biology, University College London) found the Continuum supplement ‘The Isolation of HIV: Has It Really Been Achieved? The Case Against’ by Eleopulos et al - "too heavy and difficult to understand" –when one of his students, Rajah Hassain, gave him the paper as a reference for a project proposal (taking on the question of ‘HIV’ isolation.) Mr Hassain was advised to drop the idea as it would be "too difficult" for him to understand. 

Intellectually lazy fag journalists find it easier to ‘go along’ with the insipid ‘HIV’ world-view with their ethos of ‘keep it simple’ and ‘keep it short’ by giving fag-fodder tripe entrails on ‘HIV Reader’s Digest’ (while ignoring the complexities of iatrogenic and psychogenic illness). The international fag press and the fag journalistic field is permanently subject to trial by market, whether directly, through advertisers, or indirectly through audience ratings. Moreover, as The Pink Paper, Boyz, Positive Nation, Positive Times and Axiom are distributed free they largely depend on ‘HIV Industry’ advertising revenue to keep in business. Recent ‘HIV’ propaganda adverts in London’s fag press featured designer-bodied, designer-dressed, affluent ‘bourgeois’ fags shopping at a high-class supermarket, trolley adorned with expensive consumer goods. Here ‘HIV+’ is marketed as a sign of cultural capital and upward mobility. Many fags were no-bodies until they were marketed as ‘HIV+’: they became heavily State-subsidized celebrities over night. Buying ‘HIV’ class-status opens doors to lucrative careers. ‘HIV Officialization’ can be seen as the process whereby the group (or those who dominate it) teaches itself and masks from itself its own truth, binds itself by a public profession which sanctions and imposes what it utters, tacitly defining the limits of the thinkable and so contributing to the maintenance of the ‘HIV’ social order from which it derives its power. Hence the gay culture industry has become subsumed by the ‘HIV’Culture Industry; the latter informing the former on cultural practices and life-styles. Pharmaceutical multinationals have a powerful symbolic and economic control over gay culture by selling the whole louche ‘HIV’ show to gullible gay shoppers. Hard-sell advert slogans such as Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Orwellian newspeak ‘HIV POSITIVE THINKING’ and Crusaid’s sacramental ‘Try this HIV Test?’ set the obscene and facile ‘HIV’ Life style agenda. Fags get ‘into testing’ because they see it ‘as the done thing’ and want to ‘keep up with fashion’: it is seen as the ‘proper thing to do’. Buying ‘into HIV’ means shopping for a multiple range of pharmaceutical products and social services from the ‘shop till you drop’ over-priced ‘HIV’ shopping malls. ‘HIV’ is intrinsically ‘bought’ by gay petit-bourgeois consumers: along with their mock ‘HIV+’ status and mock ‘antiretroviral’ drugs, they are ‘into’ mock-luxury furniture from Ikea and build mock- ’Olympian’ bodies to display on mock luxury holidays at Mockynos. Fags buy ‘HIV’ because, as a product, they see it as ‘value for money’, as ‘cheap and long-lasting’, as well as ‘trendy’, ‘fashionable’, ‘up-market’ and ‘fun-loving’.

The petit-bourgoise ‘HIV’ life-style is epitomized by the abhorrent yuppie magazine POZ which hard sells the poison-by-mouth ‘HIV’ Pharmaceutical Industry. The pernicious Procrustean POZ is ‘retroviral’ soft-porn, hard-selling mock ‘retroviral’ drugs to mock ‘HIV+’ consumers. In POZ, April, ’98, of the 88 pages 38 are adverts for pharmaceuticals or the ‘AIDS’ service-industry! In POZ, September, ’97 there are 44 photos of laughing hyena faces: why are we being presented with such superficial sickly smiles? In the same issue is a sinister advert for SPORANOX® sporting six snap shots of smiling mouths with the sound bite: "Liquid SPORANOX® gets THRUSH out of your mouth..." These laughing Jaws with gleaming white teeth remind one of a hideous hyena with diffuse diarrhoea. In this case the ‘liquid’ gives oral-anal satisfaction! This ‘Oral Solution’ suggests an ‘anal-delight’ sublimated message through oral-anal-liquid-diarrhoea-vile-bile gratification!

The putrefying POZ construction of an ‘HIV Community’ is profoundly petit-bourgeois: a suburban-utopia of pharmaceutical consumers hermetically-sealed in a smug space of vacant ‘HIV’ virtuality. POZ cannot transcend the limits of its vacuous ‘HIV’ ventriloquism. As Marx said: "the petit bourgeois cannot transcend the limits of his mind". Thus ‘diagnosed HIV believers’ world-view, body-view is conditioned by the symbolic power invested in the ‘HIV’ consumer life- style; they ‘feel at home’ with ‘their HIV’. Bourdieu states: "Symbolic power works partly through the control of other people’s bodies and belief that is given by the collectively recognized capacity to act in various ways on deep-rooted linguistic and muscular patterns of behavior, ether by neutralizing them or by reactivating them to function mimetically..."

In POZ, March, 1998, the advert for PROCRIT® sports middle-class trend-setters partying with the slogan: "To most people, there’s nothing special going on here. To someone with HIV-related fatigue, this is a good day". Actually, it’s a good day because there is no such thing as ‘HIV- related fatigue’. Here, PROCRIT® becomes a product of cultural value and symbolic power promoting the ‘HIV High-Life’. In POZ, adverts of sporting imagery are used to sell the ‘HIV Olympian Body’: Merck’s CRIXIVAN advert states: ‘In the battle against HIV, there’s a change in outlook’, we see a mountain climber gripping to a rock face followed by an image of him at the summit having ‘made it to the top’. An advert for FORTOVASE™ has an image of a woman javelin throwing while Immunocal™ has a women swimmer diving with the slogan: ‘Dive into a new way of treating HIV’. POZ epitomizes all that is sordid, insipid, obscene, meretricious and disingenuous about nouveau riche ‘HIV’consumer culture. The hysterical hyena laughter that shrieks from POZ’s puke pulp pages masks the screaming skulls that have died from ‘antiretroviral’ drug poisoning.

The Red Ribbon™ symbolizes all that is cheap, phoney, vulgar and visceral about the ‘HIV’ Culture Industry. Camille Paglia condemns the vapid-putrid schmaltz-tacky-ness of the Red Ribbon™: "When are people going to stop wearing those red ribbons? I hate this sanctimony about AIDS. I’ve never worn a red ribbon, ever. When is this gonna stop? It’s obscene. You can be perfectly sympathetic to AIDS without this self-advertisement. This has gotta stop. Gay men created fashion, and now these red ribbons are ruining the lines, ruining the look...So I say, for the sake of gay men everywhere, please stop wearing these things" (POZ, No.5, Dec./’94 Jan.’95). The maudlin-kitsch Red Ribbon™ epitomizes the petit-bourgeois ‘HIV’ mentality par excellence. Red Ribbon International with MBNA Int. offer you the Red Ribbon Visa Card: "Every time you use it you raise funds and AIDS awareness...If you earn £20,000 or more a year, you may prefer the extra privileges of the Red Ribbon Visa Gold Card, which include a higher credit limit". The cloying sentiment of ‘AIDS awareness’ marries cultural capital to economic capital giving the consumer a sense of smug self-satisfaction by ‘investing’ in a ‘worthy cause’. 

Sean O’Brian Strub (POZ), Graham McKerrow (Positive Nation), Neil Beasley (Positive Times), Paul Disney (Axiom) do not have the intellectual acumen and political courage to inform their readers that ‘HIV’ does not exist. Their ‘HIV’ careerism is more profitable than the truth. They know there’s big bucks in ‘HIV’. Their insidious, naive, and trivial ‘belief in HIV’ blinds them to the structuring power of the ‘HIV’ ideological fantasy that interpellates them. These snide, supine, servile editors just ‘keep in fashion’ and ‘go along with’ the global ‘HIV’ fraud because it is ‘the done thing’. Only by refusing and resisting ‘HIV’ testing can we end this panic-buying-death programming. Don’t Take the ‘Test’. Don’t Buy into the ‘HIV Lie’. Burn the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Remove your Red Ribbons. No One is ‘HIV+’. Why not say: ‘I don’t shop their for I am not’? Or in the words of Frantz Fanon: "Let us go forward brothers...we must leave our dreams and abandon our old beliefs...It is necessary to grow a new skin, to develop new thoughts, to set afoot a new man". 

Sources:

Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu, Routledge, 1984.
For they know not what they do, Slavoj Zizek, Verso, 1991.
The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Zizek, Verso, 1989.
The Commerce of HIV Disease, Gibaldi, Pharmaceutical News, Vol.4, No.4,1997
Fanon: A Critical Reader, Lewis R. Gordon et al, Blackwell, 1996.
Minima Moralia, Theodor Adorno, Verso, 1984.