Room 517-D | HIV/AIDS, Sexuality and Public Policy (Winer Plenary sponsored FSSS and SSSS) Friday, July 15, 2005 Time: 11:00 AM-12:30 PM |
Imputing subjectivity to HIV transmission.
Adam, Barry*,1, 1 University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
ABSTRACT- The talk concerns how science, government, and media go about assigning motivation to HIV transmission, and contrasts those institutional ideas with the experiences of people at risk as they go about their everyday lives. The talk compares the "calculating, rational, self-interested subject" that Barry Smart identifies as the paradigmatic subject of contemporary neoliberalism, with the "rational man" constructions circulating in health science, and the "demon infectors" that arise from time to time in the media. All of these images of HIV transmission show serious limitations when compared with the stories told by actual people who have acquired HIV. Listening to people at risk reveals a range of more mundane, everyday sites of vulnerability, and also shows how they both draw on, and evade, the institutional discourses that circulate in the larger society.
Key words: HIV transmission, risk, neoliberalism