Finding meaning in/through AIDS

Danish AIDS literature 1982-2023

Abstract

Even though recent years have seen an increasing interest in the AIDS crisis the history of Danish AIDS literature is yet to be treated as a collected phenomenon. This article makes up for this lack through an overview of the features and trends of Danish AIDS literature. Danish AIDS literature revolves around the same themes as can be seen internationally: The fear of death and the drive towards death, monogamy and queer solidarity, homosexual tragedy and heterosexual optimism, death’s now and life’s maybe. Nevertheless, Danish AIDS literature is interesting because it differs in crucial respects from American and local Swedish AIDS literature. The development of Danish AIDS literature thus seems diametrically opposed to the American ditto, in that it goes from the abstract and experimental to the more realistic, while it differs from the Swedish one by having a much larger volume. Thus, the article demonstrates that Denmark has its own independent AIDS literature. Since the early 1980s Danish literature has explored how and on what premises it is possible to find meaning in, with or through AIDS.