'On me, not in me' - Locating affect in nationalism after AIDS

Throughout the 1980s, the American right wing attempted to control the fiel d of social politics and social policy through a rhetoric of 'family'. In r esponse, the left, including much of the lesbian and gap movement, abandone d an early, theorized antipathy to family, attempting to recapture the poli tical field with ideas like 'alternative families' and 'families we chose'. These moves do not sufficiently account for the hidden glue that binds bod ies to politics, national or anti-national. The glue, or, as Benedict Ander son calls it, 'political love' is no longer an affect to be rejected but a 'feeling' to be embraced. Examining the case of sexual abstinence in early right-wing AIDS discourse and in current websites, this article suggests th at micro-politics of love are inextricable from macro-politics of nationali sm.