Anticipatory and Actualized Identities: A Cultural Analysis of the Transition from AIDS Disability to Work

Throughout the course of their lives, many people living with HIV/AIDS have prematurely retired onto AIDS disability. A new trend, however, has swept across the nation. Where once people were getting sick, leaving work, and embracing inevitable death, now, with advances in medical technology, many people with HIV/AIDS are renewing their lease on life and discovering a desire to go back to work. To learn how gay men's identities are impacted as they transition from AIDS disability back to the labor market, I conducted three months of fieldwork at an employment placement agency in San Francisco. During fieldwork I distributed informal questionnaires to 120 gay men and then formally interviewed 10 additional gay men who had either transitioned or were considering transitioning from AIDS disability back to work. Analyses reveal that cultural, structural, and medical contradictions typify the return to work. As gay men experience and live through these contradictions, their identities split into anticipatory and actualized components. By facilitating a reassessment of meanings and values, anticipatory identities cognitively and emotionally prepare individuals as they brave the road back to work. This version of identity represents a romanticized confluence of worker (role) identity, gay (status/master) identity, and overall sense of self (self-concept). Personal experiences with stigma, shame, and discrimination along with complexities of the workplace and medical services, however, prevent the maturation of anticipatory identities when seeking reemployment. This results in loosely coupled and situationally informed actualized identities. The relationship between these two identities suggests that many people living with HIV/AIDS—and indeed others who experience stressful life transitions—face complex choices between quality-of-life issues and the ability to survive according to external cultural and structural constraints.