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Abstract
This article offers an analysis of the body-mapping dimension of the ‘treatment literacy’ initiatives of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), an HIV/AIDS-focused social movement in South Africa. It situates body mapping within the politics of HIV/AIDS activism in South Africa. The alliance between activists and biomedical practitioners is explored and the emphasis on the ‘science of HIV’ in TAC treatment literacy considered alongside the foregrounding of social realities, such as poverty and inequality. The article argues that the education activities of the TAC illustrate ‘context-sensitive’ science, rather than following a linear model of ‘public understanding of science’. The personal accounts published alongside the first body maps are explored to illustrate an evident re-socialisation of biological organs and an emphasis on the relationality of bodies. The bounded bodies and the activist emphasis on body politics become ways to counteract fears of the virulence of the illness.
Notes
Notes
1. UNAIDS and WHO Citation2006.
2. The 1994 constitution enshrined health as a right of citizenship. Robins (Citation2004) contends that mobilising around ‘health citizenship’ has been central to shaping political subjectivities amongst activists.
3. The formation of TAC did not occur in isolation and was in keeping with the growth of global interest in participative initiatives and networks in the arena of HIV/AIDS.
4. See, for example, Cornwall (Citation2002).
5. Originally one man was involved, but he unfortunately withdrew. The intention was not to exclude men.
6. Coetzee et al. (Citation2004) cite the Western Cape Department of Health 2002 survey, which put the seroprevalence in public sector antenatal clinics in the Khayelitsha health district at 24.9%.
7. See MacGregor Citation2003.
8. Itwas in late 2003 that the government finally bowed to pressure to ‘roll out’ ARVs.
10. In the context of Khayelitsha, not all the women would have the literacy level, particularly in English, to write a full account on their own. The book indicates that the paintings were envisaged as another way for women to tell their stories. This is in keeping with the TAC ethos to engage marginalised people in the treatment literacy work.
12. See Irwin and Wynne (Citation1996) for an account of the assumptions of this perspective.
13. See, for example, Ramphele's (Citation1997) account of political widowhood in South Africa and the manner in which the needs of the struggle overshadowed individual grief.
14. The original maps have been exhibited and life-sized prints can now be purchased.
15. Robins (Citation2006) analyses the carefully structured ‘treatment testimonies’ of the AIDS activists in South Africa as reminiscent of religious witnessing about ‘new life’.
16. See, for example, Nguyen Citation2005.
17. Kistner (Citation2003) also discusses the philosophical problems associated with delineating the meaning of such a right. See MacGregor (Citation2006) for a discussion of how the ‘right to health’ might come to be interpreted in contexts like Khayelitsha in the face of local understandings of wellbeing.