Untimely Interventions: AIDS Writing, Testimonial and the Rhetoric of Haunting.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JUL-05

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Humanities Research Association

Untimely Interventions: AIDS Writing, Testimonial, and the Rhetoric of Haunting. By ROSS CHAMBERS. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2004. xxxvi+ 415 pp. 17 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-472-06871-7.

In a densely argued study, Ross Chambers's latest offering analyses testimonial writing, following on from Facing it: AIDS Diaries and the Death of the Author (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998). He sees testimonial writing as figural rather than directly representational, and therefore symbolic rather than descriptive. The book is made up of two parts: 'Discourses of Extremity' and 'Phantom Pain'. The former relates to writing informed by the proximity of death, often in the form of diaries...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.