Thank you for remembering and publishing What Matters. I hope that every Queer Theory course teacher in America includes this man's life.
Douglas was an inspiring professor at the U of R who challenged his students to think beyond received orthodoxies in politics and culture. He embraced the paradoxes of life and encouraged his students to see through the false binaries that others use to shape our understanding of what is possible in this world. I remember his warmth and incisive wit, but most of all, his dazzlingly engaging graduate seminars that would leave students buzzing for days afterwards. He was a lovely man.
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It is impossible to overstate the impact of Crimps's special 1987 issue of October titled “AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism.”
Very early on, while most activists were understandably focused on access to drugs and other medical issues, Doug quickly saw that the plague was also unfolding in the political and cultural realms. And, even more fundamentally, that the struggle for effective, affordable drugs was itself inextricably bound up with science, politics, art and culture.
Doug knew that the way HIV/AIDS and people with HIV/AIDS were represented and interpreted in culture was also going to affect the extent to which society would or would not mobilize against the threat.
One result of his perspective was that many of the grass roots organizations that came to life at the time focused on both the medicine and the medium. ACT-UP might be the best example.
I still have my worn copy of October that, within months of being published, became the core of a university class I developed and taught for ten years: HIV/AIDS in media and culture.
Doug. What a man.
What a strong and confident voice in the midst of a tidal wave of suffering, loathing and --ultimately -- unprecedented grass roots activism.
Rest in power, Doug.
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We were lucky to
be neighbors of Doug Crimp in a old loft building in the financial
district, not Tribeca as the obit says
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I encountered Crimp's words for the first time a few days ago, in "The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents". His fiery testimony at the public hearing about Richard Serra's sculpture stood out among the other speeches and letters. Thanks for this comprehensive obituary. I'm interested to learn more about Crimp and his work. I see my library has "On the Museum's Ruins", which I'll check out.
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