In this article, I investigate how the moral politics of HIV/AIDS activism in South Africa is contributing toward new forms of citizenship that are concerned with both rights-based struggles and with creating collectively shared meanings of the extreme experiences of illness and stigmatization of individual HIV/AIDS sufferers. I argue that it is precisely the extremity of the "near death" experiences of full-blown AIDS, and the profound stigma and "social death" associated with the later stages of the disease, that produce the conditions for HIV/AIDS survivors' commitment to "new life" and social activism. It is the activist mediation and retelling of these traumatic experiences that facilitates HIV/AIDS activist commitment and grassroots mobilization. It is also the profound negativity of stigma and social death that animates the activist's construction of a new positive HIV-positive identity and understanding of what it means to be a citizen-activist and member of a social movement.

More details/abstract: This article analyses the complex cultural politics of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. It focuses on how AIDS 'dissident' science impacted on policy discourses and how AIDS activists, together with scientists, the media and health professionals, responded. It also shows how the HIV/AIDS debate and struggles over access to treatment were framed by historically embedded cultural and political interpretations of AIDS that were a product of South Africa's apartheid and post-apartheid history. However, rather than adopting a cultural nationalist response to this historical legacy, activists from the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) deployed a class-based politics that concentrated on access to anti-retroviral drugs rather than debates on the complexities of AIDS causation. This approach contrasts with attempts by AIDS activists in the United States to influence the production of scientific knowledge on AIDS directly, for example, research funding and protocols for trials. The article discusses how TAC and its partner organisation, Medicins Sans Frontières (MSF -Doctors without Borders), strategically positioned themselves in the struggle for access to AIDS drugs, and how new forms of health citizenship, gendered identities and political subjectivities emerged in the course of these struggles. For example, ideas of bodily autonomy associated with liberal individualist conceptions of citizenship collided with patriarchal cultural ideas and practices that prevent many women from accessing biomedical interventions (for example, contraception, HIV testing and treatment). The biomedical paradigm that underpinned TAC/MSF campaigns also had to contend with local understandings of misfortune and illness. While TAC's strategies included networking with global civil society organisations such as MSF, Health Gap, and Oxfam, they also involved grassroots mobilisation and an engagement with local socio-cultural realities. This brand of health activism produced solidarities that straddled local, national and global spaces, resembling what Arjun Appadurai and others describe as 'globalisation from below'.Version: Published version Terms of use: Full terms and conditions of use:http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-ofaccess.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material This is a download from OpenDocs at the Institute ...

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