Ideology of AIDS in Literature

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to analyze the representations and significance of AIDS in literature by reading the three novels, Fumio Yamamoto's Kitto-kimi-ha-naku, Ryu Murakami's Kyoko, and Banana Yoshimoto's Sly. As can be seen in these stories, most of literary texts have represented AIDS or HIV as something horrible and abominable. In so doing, they have defined AIDS patients and HIV carriers as "others" and at the same time articulated a "normal" and "sound" identity in relation to them. Thus without any sympathy and understanding literature plays an ideological function to produce and reproduce negative images of AIDS.