'All we have is each other' - A queer and feminist political economy of the AIDS crisis

'All we have is each other'- A queer and feminist political economy of the AIDS crisis. Understanding the relationship between queer women, social reproduction, and care as analyzed through the framework of the AIDS crisis of 1980-1997.

There are numerous histories of the AIDS crisis that have been written and yet overwhelmingly many of them continue to have marginalised, subsumed, and neglected the necessary role of queer women within the crisis. My work is therefore an interjection that addresses this empirical gap and fills it with histories of care and activism.

This research project builds upon the emerging field of queer political economy, in order to explore the under-researched topic of the care work and activism undertaken by queer women throughout the AIDS crisis. Theoretically the research brings together queer and feminist work that centres the relationships between queerness, the family and neoliberal capitalism, and empirically the research contributes to histories of the AIDS crisis in the Global North by investigating the work and burdens of care within queer communities. The main objectives of the research are as follows: (a) to draw upon both queer theory and social reproduction scholarship in order develop a queer theory of care that sheds new light on the erased histories of queer women during the AIDS crisis; (b) to critically reflect on the limits of neoliberalism and capitalism for queer people and communities and recognise the gendered, classed, and racialised implications for queer women in terms of the burden of care and its implications on exacerbating the AIDS crisis; and, (c) to use the findings of this study to demonstrate the contemporary significance of debates about queerness and care particularly in terms of the relationships between queer political economy, mutual aid/care and alternative economies.