‘I Don’t Want to Hear’
‘I Don’t Want to Hear’
HIV, AIDS and the Power of Words in Bushbuckridge, South Africa1
In recent years confessional technologies have become an important means of confronting the HIV/AIDS pandemic. These include ‘coming out’ with HIV positivity, and providing public testimony about sickness and the transformative effects of antiretroviral medication. In South Africa, the urban-based Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has effectively deployed speech as a means of overcoming pathos. Drawing upon ongoing fieldwork in Bushbuckridge, I point to various forms of resistance against the imported cosmopolitan practice of confession, and show how silence is frequently a more prominent response to the pandemic. Residents of Bushbuckridge have refrained from undergoing testing for HIV antibodies and hardly ever speak about their condition in public domains. I argue that silence was not merely a means of avoiding stigma, but also reflected a fear of hearing potentially dangerous and deadly words. In local knowledge, pronouncements that one is ‘HIV-positive’ could crystallise sickness, invoke negative emotions associated with pending death, and thereby worsen suffering.
Keywords: Speech, words, power, stigma, HIV, AIDS, medicine, Northern Sotho, Shangaan, South Africa
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