Making sense of HIV/AIDS: Pascal de Duve and the sensitive historian of education¹

1. I have presented an earlier draft of this paper in November 2015 to the FWO funded KU Leuven History and Philosophy of the Discipline of Education research group led by Profs. Marc Depaepe and Prof. Paul Smeyers. HIV/AIDSI am grateful to the different members of this research group as well as to Prof. Kaat Wils and Prof. Josephine Hoegaerts for their comments and suggestions.

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s historians, in general, have increasingly engaged in critical analyses of the emergence and development of what has come to be known as ‘the HIV/AIDS pandemic’. Historians of education have also become interested in the role-played by education in the history of HIV/AIDS. Although the existing educational histories have successfully examined the multiple and far-reaching power structures that helped shape the educational responses to the disease, I will argue that their focus on ideological and geopolitical power structures runs the risk of losing sight of the crucial and often sensorial responses of individuals who have played a part in the educational history of HIV/AIDS. One such individual is the Flemish philosopher Pascal de Duve, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1989. De Duve’s particular approach to the disease clearly illustrate the importance of the senses in how people attributed particular meanings to HIV/AIDS. Knowing that this approach would prove surprising to both his readership and to his wider television audience, de Duve employed sensory experiences and modes of communication (for instance, gesture) to educative ends. I conclude that an intersensorial approach to the past will render historians of education more sensitive to unexpected personal responses towards HIV/AIDS to unexpected personal responses towards HIV/AIDS.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV/AIDS
• history of education
• senses
• Pascal de Duve
• television talk show

Acknowledgments

The author explicitly wishes to express his gratitude towards the two anonymous reviewers, the editors of the special issue as well as the editor-in-chief of The Senses and Society, whose critical readings, constructive remarks, and valuable suggestions enabled him to better fine-tune the underlying sensorial argument of the original manuscript and emphasize more clearly the value of Pascal de Duve’s life, writings and interviews for historians interested in the history of HIV/AIDS.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I have presented an earlier draft of this paper in November 2015 to the FWO funded KU Leuven History and Philosophy of the Discipline of Education research group led by Profs. Marc Depaepe and Prof. Paul Smeyers. HIV/AIDSI am grateful to the different members of this research group as well as to Prof. Kaat Wils and Prof. Josephine Hoegaerts for their comments and suggestions.

2. Translation provided by the author. The original quote goes like this: “Ce qu’il me reste à faire désormais? Vivre, tout simplement, sur cet immense cargo rond, blue et silencieux, qui m’émerveillera toujours plus, comme si le VIH, à la fois tendre et cruel, voulait m’offrir cet éblouissement croissant avant de me proposer la Mort”.

3. It might actually also be the case that my memories have been constructed in the wake of my exploration of the source material contained by the de Duve arcHIVes, which were kindly made accessible by de Duve’s parents. I am very grateful to the latter for having granted me access to this interesting collection of memorabilia and arcHIVal documents.

4. After the initial reports of the American Center for Disease Control about homosexual man living in urban centers who suffered from two rare versions of skin cancer and lung pneumonia, the official terminology implied a causal relation between homosexuality and the infection.

5. From roughly the mid-1990s, in Flanders the term “holebi” came to denote members of the gay, lesbian and bi community. It took until the 2000s for “gender diversity” to be reflected in the use of the term “LGBT(QI+)”.

6. In the history of Belgium ideological differences between Catholics, Liberals and Socialists as well as linguistic distinctions between French-speaking and Dutch-speaking regions have frequently led to heated political debates.

7. Another Belgian/Flemish example that could have been used here in order to sustain the argument that AIDS prevention history cannot fully be understood if only the visual is taken into account is the “Aidsteam”. In the beginning of 1987, a group of persons mainly based in the city of Antwerp were struck by the fact that on a total amount of 300 examined pharmacies only three provided condoms for anal use. The group decided to buy a bus and toured throughout Flanders. (Hellinck 2006, 21–22).

8. Just as in other Western countries, these kinds of prejudices were also widespread in Belgium, where people refused to drink from a person’s glass when they thought he or she was HIV positive or thought that they could be infected sharing the same toilet as an AIDS patient.

9. Neither the television advert “Zet hem op”, nor the emission of the talk show Zeker weten? of 16 March are publicly accessible. I became aware of the existence of the advert while reading the historical overview of Bart Hellinck: 1981–2006. 25 jaar strijd tegen aids in Vlaanderen. Having been granted access to the arcHIVes of de Duve I came across an analog recording of the Zeker weten? broadcast, which also contained the advert “Zet hem op”.

10. Digitalized version of the BRT broadcast of Zeker weten? on March 16 1993; the broadcast record was found in the arcHIVes of de Duve (The original Dutch quote is translated by the author).

11. The work of de Duve has mainly received attention by scholars of literature who have mainly looked into his work as an example of the AIDS narratives that tried to counter existing medical interpretations of aids from the end of the 1980s onwards (See for instance also the work of a contemporary of de Duve, namely the French Hervé Guibert and in particular his book A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie 1990).

12. Digitalised version of the BRT-emission of Zeker weten? (The original Dutch quote is translated by the author).

13. Ibidem.

14. Translated by the author. There also exists a publicly available visual recording of Pascal de Duve’s “cri rauque”: http://www.vimeo.com/47879376.

15. For those watching from home, the sight of Pascal de Duve fainting on screen probably left a touching impression as can be sensed from the recollection of Gérard: “The last memory I have of Pascal is his appearance in a television show presented by Guillaume Durand. At that time his disease already had reached an advanced stage and his body began to convulse during the show. I cried in front of my TV screen, I was suffering with him”. http://www.le-blog-de-gerard.com/article-cargo-vie-pascal-de-duve-mon-coup-de-coeur-du-jour-le-21-juin-2010-52700026.html (Accessed on January 29 2019, Translated by the author).

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Pieter Verstraete

Pieter Verstraete is Associate Professor of History of Education and works at the Research Centre Education, Culture and Society (KU Leuven). He is mainly interested in the history of educational initiatives for persons with disabilities and the role played by sounds and silences in the history of education in general. He co-founded the annual Leuven DisABILITY filmfestival in 2011 and is member of several editorial boards and scientific committees including Paedagogica Historica and KADOC. He received several scientific awards for his research as well as for his education. Currently he is working on a manuscript dealing with the educational history of silence in the twentieth century.