Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP's Fight Against AIDS. By Deborah B. Gould. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. 536p. $65.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.

Extract

Deborah Gould's volume is a beautifully written account of direct-action AIDS activism in the United States from its emergence in the mid-1980s through its decline in the early 1990s. The story of ACT UP, the central focus of the work, illuminates the complex history of both the AIDS epidemic and the political dynamics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities at a key moment of transition. Founded during the conservative backlash of the Reagan era and active through the conservative turn in LGBT politics of the early Clinton years (with the prioritization of questions like military service), the group's confrontational tactics, radical discourse, and political successes prove something of an anomaly. Explaining this anomaly is Gould's central concern, and in doing so, she offers a compelling argument for the importance of addressing affect and emotion in the study of social movements, providing a carefully nuanced conceptual framework to do so.