“Battlefields of Opposition” – Constructing HIV/AIDS Diversity Literacy Week 6 / Lecture 1 Prepared by Claire Kelly

Competing constructions of HIV/AIDS in SA (Posel)  “ symbolic politics of the new South Africa” (p. 18)  “metaphorical significance” (p.18)  “far more than a matter of public health, having wide ranging political and symbolic repercussions that cut to the very meaning of South Africa’s ‘liberation’…” (p. 18)  “the stakes were far higher than the nation’s physical health: it’s ethical well being, and the integrity of it’s social and political body, were similarly at risk” (p. 22)  “political struggles over the very nature of AIDS ” (p.14) Prepared by Claire Kelly

Construction of HIV/Aids in SA  Insert: pictures from Zapiro, South Africa’s leading cartoonist who’s images capture the public discourse on HIV/Aids in South Africa   indep indep    Prepared by Claire Kelly

Competing constructions of HIV/AIDS in SA (Posel)  “ scientific orthodox ” (TAC, UN)  HI virus causes AIDS  HI virus spread mostly through heterosexual sex in Africa  Treatment of with ARV’s & education programmes to change sex behaviours  “ dissident ” (Mbeki)  Scientific orthodox as expression of West’s scientific imperialism > pathologisation & sexualisation of black African bodies  “…displaced sex from the foreground of the discussion” (p. 23)  “The problem became centrally a matter of Africa’s ‘level of development’, rather than a racial, cultural or moral one… rather than any judgment on African ‘values’, ‘ways of life’, or personhood that might reiterate racist stereotypes of the black African. ” (p. 23) Prepared by Claire Kelly

“Battlefield of oppositions” (Njambi, 2004, p. 283) “ Scientific orthodox ”“ Dissident ” ScienceSuperstition Medical knowledgeTradition Normal sexualityAbnormal sexuality CivilizedBarbaric ModernityBackwardness ExpertNon-expert EducatedIgnorant “to enter the[ HIV/AIDS] discourse is to immediately be drawn into a battlefield filled with conceptual oppositions already in place” (paraphrasing Njambi, 2004, p. 283) “ epidemic of significations ” (Posel, p. 18, citing Treichler, 1999, p.1) Prepared by Claire Kelly

Competing “scientific” discourses (Patton)  Immunology  AIDS  “social & environmental causes”  Enhanced ability to cope with opportunistic infection  Virology  HIV  “sexually transmittable pathogen”  Halt progression on the virus  “…why particular forms of scientific enquiry gain control of the metaphors that provide larger cultural explanations of a range of phenomena metaphorized onto the body” (p. 59) Prepared by Claire Kelly

“Behaviourist-orientated traditional model” (Patton, p.71)  Ignorance or attitudinal or group deficiency  Unhealthy individual behaviour  Behaviour change “Hard to reach” = “failure of moral and conceptual skills” “ Experts ” (pure science) Population (popular understanding) Information & counselling Prepared by Claire Kelly

“Behaviourist-orientated traditional model” (Patton, p.71)  “masks way medical research reconstructs neocolonial relationships ”  “obscures ways in which pressure to adopt organisational schema of science as representative of lived experience reinscribes hierarchies of social difference ”  “reads as progress the destruction of vernaculars and the adoption of scientific language” e.g. “slim disease”  “ Dismissive of indigenous ways of knowing ” (Chilisa, p. 659) Prepared by Claire Kelly

Disciplinary power “modern form of power which for Foucault, is productive rather than repressive, in the sense of ‘bringing things into being’, producing both knowledge (i.e. the discipline of [psychology], as a way of knowing the world), and subjective effects (e.g. individuality, the soul, personal psychology etc.)”(Hook, 2004, p. 213) “ Disciplinary power is related to techniques, procedures and assessments that measure, monitor, and treat subjects as to normalise deviant ones further ” (Hook, 2004, p. 213) Prepared by Claire Kelly

Extra references  Wairim~u Ngaruiya Njambi (2004) Dualisms and female bodies in representations of African female circumcision: A feminist critique. Feminist Theory 5 (3), p. 281 – 303  Hook, D. (2004) Foucault, disciplinary power and the critical pre-history of psychology. In D. Hook, P.Kiguwa, N. Mkhize & A. Collins (Eds) Critical psychology. Cape Town: UCT Press