Gay Subculture, AIDS, and Neo-Decadence: 1980s in Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation (2002)

Abstract

Will Self’s Dorian: An Imitation (2002) provides a glimpse to the gay subculture of 1980s’ London and New York, and contextualizes the issues like AIDS epidemic and gay liberation movement. The shown attributes of the gay subculture including the queer fashion trends, drug consumptions, and unprotected gay sex even at the risk of HIV transmission parallel the hedonistic and counter-normative ‘decadent’ aspects of Oscar Wilde’s source–text, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Cathode Narcissus, the video installation capturing the naked male beauty, makes Dorian the ‘dis-embodied’ model/emblem for gay pride in a digital era and marks the posthumanist shift in the new form of decadence or neo-decadence. This paper, with respect to Self’s Dorian: An Imitation, would engage to explore how the attributes of 1980s’ urban gay subculture and rapid transmission of HIV among gays come under the paradigm of neo-decadence in the fin de siècle (meaning, “end of the century”) of the twentieth century.