Bearing the right to healthcare, autonomy and hope

Nkululeko Nkomo

Social Science & Medicine, 2015, vol. 147, issue C, 163-169

Abstract: In this article, I discuss the significance of understanding within the context of the campaign for affordable and accessible HIV/AIDS treatments in South Africa, the transformational effects of the interplay between political rationality and affect for HIV-positive subjectivities. The article focuses on the policy tactics, in 2001, of the lobbying for a policy to prevent mother-to-child-transmission of HIV. A close reading of the lobby groups' rationalization of healthcare as a fundamental human right reveals a strategic attempt to recast a sense of helplessness into self-responsibilization, which concurrently involved nourishing hope in the preferred future for women with HIV to be afforded the right to individual choice associated with self-determination. Therefore, the struggle for a policy to prevent mother-to-child-transmission of HIV - an exemplary initiative to reconstitute HIV-positive subjectivity – maneuvered within both rationalizing and emotive spaces. Ongoing engagement of the broader campaign's contribution to redefining being HIV-positive thus also necessitates accounting for the effects of the convergence of political rationality and emotion in its tactically emancipatory project.

Keywords: South Africa; Political rationality; Affect; HIV/AIDS treatments; Mother-to-Child-Transmission; HIV-Positive subjectivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:147:y:2015:i:c:p:163-169

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.11.003

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