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. "Unbecoming "is Michaels'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. Michaels'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...

Among the chief themes of this book are the representation of AIDS in the mass media and in the arts, and the encouragement of a wider understanding of the personal impact of AIDS and its social experience, particularly among those social groups living with the highest levels of illness, death and mourning.