AIDS in Cultural Bodies

AIDS in Cultural Bodies PDF Author: Gokulnath Ammanathil
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443891975
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
This book examines the various psychosocial and sexual ordeals of African American people living with HIV or AIDS (PLWH/PLWAs) as depicted in African American literary narratives dealing with HIV/AIDS published from 1980 to 2010. Central to these texts are the psychosocial and sexual challenges faced by the African American PLWH/PLWAs and the various adaptive strategies they choose to come to terms with their HIV/AIDS identity. Although PLWH/PLWAs irrespective of race confront these brutal realities, the intersection of a mythologized black sexuality, homophobia and intra-community marginalization places African American PLWH/PLWAs in an unenviable position. While abjection and social death rupture the social self of PLWH/PLWAs, the ostracization they suffer as a result of their diagnosis affects their sexual self, leading to sexual death. In addition to illustrating the social and sexual issues of PLWH/PLWAs in relation to race, sexuality and gender, the African American HIV/AIDS literary narratives studied here also foreground various coping strategies conscripted by PLWH/PLWAs to surmount the onerous psychosocial and sexual challenges they face. In view of the above concerns, this study analyses social death, sexual death and coping in relation to HIV/AIDS at three levels, namely the intersection of blackness, sexuality and HIV/AIDS; the impact of such an intersection on the sexual life of black PLWH/PLWAs; and, finally, the envisioned coping strategies for affirmative survival. This book offers insightful critical analysis of HIV/AIDS literary narratives by celebrated authors such as Samuel R. Delany, Cheryl L. West, Essex Hemphill, Michael B. Hunter, Steven Corbin, Charlotte Watson Sherman, Sapphire, Pearl Cleage, Sheneshka Jackson, Gil R. Robertson, and Marvelyn Brown.

AIDS

AIDS PDF Author: Douglas Crimp
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN: 9780262530798
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
The literature on AIDS has attempted to teach us the "facts" about this new disease or to provide a narrative account of scientific discovery and developing public health policy. But AIDS has precipitated a crisis that is not primarily medical, or even social and political; AIDS has precipitated a crisis of signification the "meaning" of AIDS is hotly contested in all of the discourses that conceptualize it and seek to respond to it. AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism is the first book on the subject that takes this battle over meaning as its premise. Contributors include Leo Bersani, author of The Freudian Body; Simon Watney, who serves on the board of the Health Education Committee of London's Terrence Higgens Trust; Jan Zita Grover, medical editor at San Francisco General Hospital; Suki Ports, former executive director of the New York City Minority Task Force on AIDS; and Sander Gilman, author of Difference and Pathology. Also included are essays by Paula A. Treichler, who teaches in the Medical School and in communications at the University of Illinois; Carol Leigh, a member of COYOTE and contributor to Sex Work; and Max Navarre, editor of the People With AIDS Coalition monthly Newsline. In addition to these essays, the book contains a portfolio of manifestos, articles, letters, and photographs from the publications of the PWA Coalition, an interview with three members of the AIDS discrimination unit of the New York City Commission on Human Rights; and presentations for the independent video documentaries on AIDS, Testing the Limits and Bright Eyes.

AIDS and the National Body

AIDS and the National Body PDF Author: Thomas E. Yingling
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Yingling was a relatively young, but already important Americanist who died of AIDS related causes in 1992. This volume gathers his uncollected and unpublished essays together with some of his more personal writing and memorial essays by three former col

HIV in World Cultures

HIV in World Cultures PDF Author: Dr Gustavo Subero
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472403843
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This book analyses the way that HIV/AIDS is often narrativised and represented in contemporary world cultures, as well as the different strategies of remembrance deployed by different (sub)cultural groups affected by the illness. Through a close study of a variety of cultural texts; including cinema, literature, theatre, art and photography amongst others, it demonstrates the trajectory that such narratives and representations have undergone since the advent of the ‘discovery’ of the disease in the 1980s. Acknowledging the central - yet often overlooked - role that cultural products have played in the construction of public opinion towards the condition itself and those who suffer it, this ground-breaking volume focuses on a variety of narratives, as well as strategies of coping with HIV/AIDS that have emerged across the globe. Bringing together research on the UK, North and South America, Africa and China, it provides rich textual analyses of the ways in which the HIV positive body has been portrayed in contemporary culture, with attention to the differences between specific national contexts, whilst keeping in view a space of commonality amongst the different experiences reflected in such texts. As such, it will be of interest to social scientists and scholars of cultural and media studies, concerned with cultural production and representations of the body and sickness.

AIDS and the Body Politic

AIDS and the Body Politic PDF Author: Catherine Waldby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134768435
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States

The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309046289
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Europe's "Black Death" contributed to the rise of nation states, mercantile economies, and even the Reformation. Will the AIDS epidemic have similar dramatic effects on the social and political landscape of the twenty-first century? This readable volume looks at the impact of AIDS since its emergence and suggests its effects in the next decade, when a million or more Americans will likely die of the disease. The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States addresses some of the most sensitive and controversial issues in the public debate over AIDS. This landmark book explores how AIDS has affected fundamental policies and practices in our major institutions, examining: How America's major religious organizations have dealt with sometimes conflicting values: the imperative of care for the sick versus traditional views of homosexuality and drug use. Hotly debated public health measures, such as HIV antibody testing and screening, tracing of sexual contacts, and quarantine. The potential risk of HIV infection to and from health care workers. How AIDS activists have brought about major change in the way new drugs are brought to the marketplace. The impact of AIDS on community-based organizations, from volunteers caring for individuals to the highly political ACT-UP organization. Coping with HIV infection in prisons. Two case studies shed light on HIV and the family relationship. One reports on some efforts to gain legal recognition for nonmarital relationships, and the other examines foster care programs for newborns with the HIV virus. A case study of New York City details how selected institutions interact to give what may be a picture of AIDS in the future. This clear and comprehensive presentation will be of interest to anyone concerned about AIDS and its impact on the country: health professionals, sociologists, psychologists, advocates for at-risk populations, and interested individuals.

Reframing Bodies

Reframing Bodies PDF Author: Roger Hallas
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822391406
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
In Reframing Bodies, Roger Hallas illuminates the capacities of film and video to bear witness to the cultural, political, and psychological imperatives of the AIDS crisis. He explains how queer films and videos made in response to the AIDS epidemics in North America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa challenge longstanding assumptions about both historical trauma and the politics of gay visibility. Drawing on a wide range of works, including activist tapes, found footage films, autobiographical videos, documentary portraits, museum installations, and even film musicals, Hallas reveals how such “queer AIDS media” simultaneously express both immediacy and historical consciousness. Queer AIDS media are neither mere ideological critiques of the dominant media representation of homosexuality and AIDS nor corrective attempts to produce “positive images” of people living with HIV/AIDS. Rather, they perform complex, mediated acts of bearing witness to the individual and collective trauma of AIDS. Challenging the entrenched media politics of who gets to speak, how, and to whom, Hallas offers a bold reconsideration of the intersubjective relations that connect filmmakers, subjects, and viewers. He explains how queer testimony reframes AIDS witnesses and their speech through its striking combination of direct address and aesthetic experimentation. In addition, Hallas engages recent historical changes and media transformations that have not only displaced queer AIDS media from activism to the archive, but also created new witnessing dynamics through the logics of the database and the remix. Reframing Bodies provides new insight into the work of Gregg Bordowitz, John Greyson, Derek Jarman, Matthias Müller, and Marlon Riggs, and offers critical consideration of important but often overlooked filmmakers, including Jim Hubbard, Jack Lewis, and Stuart Marshall.

Globalizing AIDS

Globalizing AIDS PDF Author: Cindy Patton
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452904351
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Pioneering cultural critic Cindy Patton looks at the complex interaction between modern science, media coverage, and local activism during the first decade of the epidemic.

Viral Cultures

Viral Cultures PDF Author: Marika Cifor
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 145296355X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Delves deep into the archives that keep the history and work of AIDS activism alive Serving as a vital supplement to the existing scholarship on AIDS activism of the 1980s and 1990s, ViralCultures is the first book to critically examine the archives that have helped preserve and create the legacy of those radical activities. Marika Cifor charts the efforts activists, archivists, and curators have made to document the work of AIDS activism in the United States and the infrastructure developed to maintain it, safeguarding the material for future generations to remember these social movements and to revitalize the epidemic’s past in order to remake the present and future of AIDS. Drawing on large institutional archives such as the New York Public Library, as well as those developed by small, community-based organizations, this work of archival ethnography details how contemporary activists, artists, and curators use these records to build on the cultural legacy of AIDS activism to challenge the conditions of injustice that continue to undergird current AIDS crises. Cifor analyzes the various power structures through which these archives are mediated, demonstrating how ideology shapes the nature of archival material and how it is accessed and used. Positioning vital nostalgia as both a critical faculty and a generative practice, this book explores the act of saving this activist past and reanimating it in the digital age. While many books, popular films, and major exhibitions have contributed to a necessary awareness of HIV and AIDS activism, Viral Cultures provides a crucial missing link by highlighting the powerful role of archives in making those cultural moments possible.

When Bodies Remember

When Bodies Remember PDF Author: Didier Fassin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520940458
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
In this book, France's leading medical anthropologist takes on one of the most tragic stories of the global AIDS crisis—the failure of the ANC government to stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Didier Fassin traces the deep roots of the AIDS crisis to apartheid and, before that, to the colonial period. One person in ten is infected with HIV in South Africa, and President Thabo Mbeki has initiated a global controversy by funding questionable medical research, casting doubt on the benefits of preventing mother-to-child transmission, and embracing dissidents who challenge the viral theory of AIDS. Fassin contextualizes Mbeki's position by sensitively exploring issues of race and genocide that surround this controversy. Basing his discussion on vivid ethnographical data collected in the townships of Johannesburg, he passionately demonstrates that the unprecedented epidemiological crisis in South Africa is a demographic catastrophe as well as a human tragedy, one that cannot be understood without reference to the social history of the country, in particular to institutionalized racial inequality as the fundamental principle of government during the past century.