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This essay explores AIDS discourse during the AIDS crisis of the 1980-90s in the United States and argues that ACT UP, the grassroots AIDS activist organization, played a crucial role to produce counter-discourses against dominant homophobic cultural practices amid the AIDS epidemic. In doing so, this essay analyzes Jim Hubbard’s acclaimed documentary film, United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (2012) and examines its unflinching portrayal of ACT UP’s indefatigable fight for justice and dignity for people with AIDS, which is well expressed in the group’s representational practices. My paper also surveys how science such as immunology had served as the master discourse that orchestrated all other narratives about AIDS of the 1980-90s in the United States. I argue that contemporary American science incorporated non-biological variables like homophobia into its discursive construction of AIDS and examine ACT UP’s strategies and direct actions for counter-representations against the dominant AIDS discourse. By paying special attention to United in Anger’s presentation of discursive struggles between American mainstream society and ACT UP, this essay concludes that ACT UP’s ultimate goal is not to find the ‘truth’ of AIDS but to emphasize political effects of AIDS discourses and pursue direct action to end the AIDS Crisis.
