Unbecoming

In 1982, the American-born anthropologist Eric Michaels went to Australia to research the impact of television on remote aboriginal communities. Over the next five years, until his death, he became a major intellectual presence in Australia.Unbecomingis Michaelsrs"s gritty, provocative, and intellectually powerful account of living with AIDS-a chronicle of the last year of his life as he became increasingly ill. Michaelsrs"s diary offers a forceful and ironic rumination on the cultural phenomenon of AIDS, how it relates to his concerns as both an anthropologist and a gay man, and the failure of medical and governmental institutions to come to terms with the disease. Like the AIDS testimony of artist David Wojnarowicz and filmmaker Derek Jarman,Unbecomingprovides a view of the AIDS epidemic from a distinctly new vantage point.

Eric Michaels was Lecturer in Media Studies at Griffith University in Brisbane.