Pandemics, routine death, and pleasure

abstract

Southern African studies of the HIV/AIDS pandemic which is endemic in South Africa have been critiqued for being anti-pleasure. Scholars observe that these studies do not account for people’s experiences with sensuality, pleasure and desire even while living under a deadly pandemic. In this article we contribute to the subject area of intimacy in the midst of deadly pandemics (‘viral times’). We argue for an exploration of young Black people’s experiences with desire, pleasure and intimacy under both HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. This requires looking at the intimate lives of young Black people in the public, domestic, private and intimate spheres. As COVID-19 shifted modes of social interaction – limiting touch, embracing and kissing – we explore young Black South Africans’ experiences of intimacy, pleasure-seeking and joy-making in ‘viral times’. We show that while HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 shifted forms of intimacies, they also both produced new forms of individual and collective intimacies.

keywords:

• pleasure
• intimacy
• pandemics
• COVID-19
• HIV/AIDS

Acknowledgement

We would like to acknowledge Kagiso Nko for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, along with Dr Danai Mupotsa in helping us to revise certain ideas in the paper. Any corrections, however, remain our own.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gcobani Qambela

GCOBANI QAMBELA is a multi-award-winning distinguished educator and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Johannesburg. He is President of the Anthropology Southern Africa association. He is the co-author, with Dr Warren Chalklen, of the Anti-Racist Teaching Practices and Learning Strategies workbook. He is working on two monographs focusing on ‘The Anthropology of Boyhoods’ and the interior lives of men living in conditions of economic and structural violence. He teaches Childhoods and Youth, Anthropological Theories and Medical Anthropology. Email: [email protected]

Esihle Lupindo

ESIHLE LUPINDO is a 2021 Fulbright student and a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the United States, and holds a BA, BA Hons and an MA with Distinction in Sociology from Rhodes University in South Africa. He has wide-ranging academic interests which are all connected to the worlds that we have lived in, contemporary worlds and worlds that we are hopeful for. Email: [email protected]