Science, stigmatisation and afro-pessimism in the South African debate on AIDS

Abstract

Summary This paper examines how certain assumptions concerning sexual behaviour, race and nationality emerge at the core of explanations regarding the origin of HIV. In particular, it returns to discussions of the so-called "AIDS debate" in South Africa in the 2000s. On the one hand, it focuses on how these assumptions reinforce the understanding of AIDS as stigma and "social problem", to the extent that they emphasise the existence of geographical areas and "risk groups". On the other, these same assumptions are examined in the light of processes of identification and belonging, given that in the majority of reports, both academic and popular, "Africans" and "Africa" are inexorably understood in pessimistic terms. The purpose is to show how certain aspects of the South African debate refer to the way the global history of AIDS has been constructed over the past three decades. An exhaustive historiographical reconstruction is not attempted here, rather by returning to some works on the genesis of the epidemic, the paper highlights the individual and collective stigmatisation related to the public health discourse on AIDS, particularly such notions as "risk", "exposure" and "vulnerability". The proposal is such notions are strongly informed by a moral sense that traverses the dominant cognitive model in the approaches to the global epidemic and the AIDS debate in South Africa. The last part of the article focuses on the tensions that emerge between the explanations of experts from the field of public health and the contributions of social scientists, particularly anthropologists, frequently questioned for their alleged cultural relativism.