Power/Knowledge and Discredited Identities: Media Representations of Herpes

Abstract

Popular press accounts of genital herpes (herpes simplex virus-II) are presented as sites for the production of symbolic stigma. Close readings of 141 magazine articles about HSV-II explore the discursive practices that constituted herpetic as a discredited identity. The article critiques these stigmatizing practices on two levels: (1) as inscriptions of dominant administrative, moral, and scientific ideologies, and (2) as constituting a conceptual control regime that eventually spreads in unanticipated ways beyond the original confines of the genital herpes epidemic.