Litshop presents, Joaquín Terrones “AIDS, Race, and the Modular Calculus in Samuel Delany’s Nevèrÿon series”

Abstract: Written in 1984, Samuel Delany’s The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals became the first novel about AIDS published by a major US publisher. The ninth installment in his Return to Nevèrÿon sword-and-sorcery series, Delany’s tale continues the story of Gorgik the Liberator’s movement to abolish slavery in a society with a brown ruling class and a blond slave caste. However, unlike earlier entries in the series, the novel alternates between present-day New York and prehistoric Nevèrÿon, both afflicted by a mysterious new disease that seems to affect mostly men who have sex with men. This talk will examine the relationship between the representation of AIDS in The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals and the Nevèrÿon series’ overarching meditation on freedom and slavery. Drawing on Delany’s extensive theoretical production from that period, I will show how his text critiques racialized formations of desire at the moment in which an antiblack discourse about the epidemic began to coalesce in the medical literature and the media.