Others in Attendance: Queer Autothanatographical Address in Eric Michaels’s Unbecoming

This essay proposes posthumous address as an essential and understudied parameter of LGBTQ+ life writing. I take up Unbecoming (1987–1988), the diary begun by anthropologist Eric Michaels eleven months before his death due to AIDS-related opportunistic infections, as an exemplar of what I term queer autothanatographical address. Bringing together diverse theoretical approaches to autothanatography (the writing of the death of the author), queer theoretical interrogations of time and temporality, and LGBTQ+ criticism and artwork responsive to the HIV/AIDS crisis, I argue that Michaels models a practice of posthumous address with insurgent political and ethical stakes. This practice, I show, transforms his lifewriting project from a personal diary to an acerbic and interpellative letter.