1. AIDS as Metaphor:
Body Politic and Culture of Surveillance
By DesiWimberly and John Wilkinson
2. Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
• Born in New York, raised in Tuscon, AZ and Los
Angeles, CA
• Celebrated writer and academic
• Taught Freshman English at Uconn, 1951-1952
• Identified as bisexual
• Wrote extensively about cancer, HIV/AIDS, and
illness
• Died from complications of cancer
3. HIV/AIDS
• What do you know about HIV/AIDS?
• What is your perception of people who have
HIV/AIDS?
• How can someone contract HIV/AIDS and
when you think of someone contracting HIV
and developing AIDS, what do you think of?
4. HIV/AIDS Definition
• HIVis an acronym for Human
ImmunodeficiencyVirus. The virus destroys
important cells that fight disease and infection. Can
stay hidden for prolonged periods of time (approx. 6
months). Attacks “T-Cells,” key part of the immune
system used in fighting infections and disease. The
virus invades “T-Cells,” using them to make copies of
itself before destroying them.
5. HIV/AIDS Definition (Cont.)
• AIDSis an acronym for
AcquiredImmunodeficiency Syndrome. Once
the virus has killed enough “T-Cells,” so that
the immune system can no longer fight
infections and disease, and the body is
attacked by “Opportunistic Infections” that it
cannot fight off.
• AIDS is the final stage of HIV
6. Current HIV/AIDS Trends
• Lower Transmission Rates
• More Awareness
• Cause of Death
• Late Diagnosis
• Disproportionate Impact
– CDC
7. Body Politic and Language
• Rudolf Virchow (1850): Founder of cellular pathology;
referred to the body as being like a society (Sontag 94f.)
• Body Politic: a nation regarded as a corporate entity; a state
– OED
– Also utilized to describe the representation of a body in terms
typically associated with a state
• Emphasizes the relationship between a condition and the
language used to describe the condition and the perception
of those with the condition.
– Militaristic diction and metaphor (Sontag 99)
– Disease and Foreigness (Sontag 136)
8. Body Politic (Cont.)
• John Donne – “describes illness as an enemy that
invades, that lays siege to the body-fortress”
(Sontag 195)
• “Disease is seen as an invasion of alien
organisms, to which the body responds by its
own military operations” (Sontag 156)
• Does the militaristic metaphor of “invading”
illnesses gender the language and perception of
people with medical conditions?
10. Myths and Misconceptions (Cont.)
• Comes from sex with monkeys and bestiality
• Only homosexuals/minorities can contract it
• Spread by homosexuals
• Government conspiracy and form of eugenics
• Devine retribution for hedonism
11. Myths and Misconceptions (Cont.)
• Hunters in West Africa killed and ate infected
chimpanzees
• May have been spread from infected
chimpanzees as far back as the late-1800s
– AIDS.gov
12. Myths and Misconceptions (Cont.)
• AIDS is an acquired medical condition, not an
illness in and of itself.
• Diagnosed in Temporal Stages
• Has a “dual metaphoric geneology” (Sontag
105): micro-process is equated with invasion
and transmission is equated with pollution.
13. Perception of HIV/AIDS Diagnosis
• “Fictions of Responsibility” (Sontag 100)
– Tuberculosis, Syphilis, Cancer, HIV/AIDS
– AIDS is perceived as a violation and invasion of the
body, being contracted from outside (without)
rather than coming from the body itself (within)
– HIV kills cells, Cancer mutates and proliferates
14. Body Politic and Literary
Representation
• “All these and security were within. Without
was the ‘Red Death’”
• “*T]here came yet another chiming of the
clock, and then there were the same
disconcert and tremulousness and meditation
as before.”
– Edgar Allen Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death”
15. Causality and Perception
• “Member of a certain ‘risk group’
• “Flushes out an identity”
• “Confirms an identity”
• Associated with hedonism, indulgence, and
delinquancy
– Sontag 112f.
16. Causality and Perception (Cont.)
• Does the language of invasion and weakness
of the body serve as a contradiction to ideas
of control and masculinity?
• Does the perception of HIV/AIDS serve to
actively exclude an “other” or “without”
despite the universality of the conditon?
– Sexualities, Minorites
17. Culture of Surveillance
• “Surveillance based on a system of permanent
registration”
• “The relation of each individual to his disease
and to his death passes through
representatives of power, the registrations
they make of it, the decisions they take on it”
– Michel Foucault, “Panopticism” 196f.
18. Culture of Surveillance (Cont.)
• Do you think that there is a correlation
between ideas of surveillance and people who
are HIV/AIDS positive?
– Categorization
• How does this possible surveillance disrupt
notions of masculinity?
19. Pedro Zamora
• 1972-1994
• Declared HIV/AIDS positive at 17 and died of
related complications at 22
• One of the first openly gay, HIV/AIDS positive
individuals in media
• Garnered attention through MTV’s The Real
World: San Francisco
• Pedro Zamora Documentary
20. Sources
• AIDS.gov. “What is HIV/AIDS?”
• "body politic, n.". OED Online. Oxford University Press.
26 March 2013.
• CDC, “HIV/AIDS Today”
• Foucault, Michel. “Panopticism.” Discipline and Punish:
The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York:
Vintage Books, 1979. Print.
• MTV. “A Tribute to Pedro Zamora.”
• Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Masque of the Red Death”
• Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its
Metaphors. New York: Picador, 1989. Print.
