ELCS0091: Crisis 2020/21 UG Class Blog

The Bianchis, so named because of their white robes, were men, women, or children, leaving for nine days of pious processions, they could practice self-flagellation as a form of penance that mortified the body, demonstrated sorrow for sin, and joined one with Christ in his Passion. It is a movement of religious and popular devotion, mainly practiced in Italy, from the Alps to Rome. The groups were mostly uniting around 200 to 300 people moving from town to town. These groups could sometimes concern more than a thousand people (Black Death Facts, 2020).

During these nine days, they engaged in a variety of devotional practices: they visited churches and heard mass, listened to sermons, recited prayers, sang hymns, observed dietary restrictions, and called for peace and mercy. (Bornstein, n.d.) Practices could be done rather publicly or in private. Nine days were initially necessary to see off the threat of plague, but later the number of days changed, depending on the devotion and whether a procession was already occurring in a specific location (Lee, 2017). An example of songs they could sing is Stabat Mater, a hymn to Mary who testifies to her suffering during the crucification of Jesus. They could also to the practice of self-flagellation. This practice was done hoping to get redemption of their sins and escape from the plague. They demonstrated their religious fervor and sought atonement for their sins by vigorously whipping themselves in public displays of penance, aiming to achieve ‘Imitato Christi’: imitating the Christ. This movement became even more practiced during the period of the Black Death, around 1399.

This unified people believing in the same thing: religion could save them from the catastrophe occurring around them for which they did not have a scientific explanation. The fact of uniting and devoting together, hoping to be saved from the Plague was also a way for people to feel a part of a community. It was a collective devotion, making them feel surrounded and understood: there was an idea of community. Finally, this was also a way to have the feeling to act against the pandemic. As they didn’t have the science to explain the disease, turning to God was one of the only ways to take action against the horror that was happening in Europe and around the world. They felt the need to do something, try to have an impact on their environment.

By October 1349, Pope Clement VI proclaimed that the Flagellants were not following the rules of the Church (source). Local Church and secular leaders began to condemn them and/or forbid them from entry into their territories or cities (Euroform Healthcare, 2020). This didn’t stop the movement that continued to occur importantly in the 15th century and is still partly occurring today in times of crisis.

Black Death Facts. 2020. Flagellants • Black Death Facts. [online] Available at: <https://blackdeathfacts.com/flagellants/>

Bornstein, D., n.d. The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy. Cambridge University Press.

Euroform Healthcare. 2020. The Flagellants – Bubonic Plague – Euroform Healthcare. [online] Available at: <https://www.euroformhealthcare.biz/bubonic-plague/the-flagellants.html>

Lee, A., 2017. Localising Collective Devotion: The Bianchi of 1399 at Lucca and Pistoia. London: UCL, pp.77-154.

Among the many historical and modern definitions of the word ‘crisis’, its original ancient Greek definition remains relevant today, as a turning-point where the community must come together to decide what to do next (1). We have seen plenty of that during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in its early days, and because of its ability to affect anyone, especially the elderly, society responded to it on a massive scale. People came together to make masks, provide food for children, and generally embody the neighbourly sense of codependence that we have apparently been losing. However, it was specifically its ability to affect everyone that caused such a large-scale mobilization of resources and regulations. Other crises that disproportionately affect minorities and powerless groups have the tendency to be disregarded, and as a result, exclusion within crisis situations means that the egalitarian feeling of citizens banding together to defeat a joint problem is perhaps over-exaggerated.

(2)(description: nurses wearing volunteer-made fabric masks due to PPE shortage)

Daniel Defoe’s “Journal of a Plague Year” is an intriguing piece of fiction.  Its accounts of all the different individuals who would have passed through Defoe’s corner of London give a varied and exciting depiction of the hustle and bustle within one of Europe’s most important cities. The narrator, HF, mentions the rich (himself included) having the option to flee to their houses in the countryside to escape the plague, while the poor would perish along the roads after being denied entry to every town they came upon, and when infected with the plague, were too weak to drag themselves to find food. Some benefactors would leave bread in fields at a safe distance, but even still, thousands perished out there. They were also targeted by con-men promising expensive cures and talismans to cure the sickness or keep it away altogether; perhaps they knew that if their customers died, they wouldn’t be held accountable anyway. The religious convinced themselves that the plague was God’s wrath, and would endure periods of extended fasting to protect themselves (3).

The variety calls attention to the role of class privilege within crisis. The poor could not feed themselves and often found themselves at the mercy of those looking to make a quick buck, while the middle-class had the privilege of choosing not to eat as a preventative measure. As expected, the rich simply left. In a universal crisis such as one caused by disease, yes, “we’re all in the same boat,” but poverty adds a completely separate layer to the struggle of survival. Exclusion of those without economic privilege in modern crisis narratives is a privilege in and of itself, because a stay-at-home order might be frustrating for all of us, but having to balance it with also being unable to pay rent invalidates the sentiment of a communal struggle that so many corporations and celebrities have enjoyed propagating.

It gets worse when the crisis in question doesn’t affect everyone. The 1980’s HIV crisis’s struggle for widespread acknowledgement seemed to come down to two primary factors, the first being general homophobia (4). The general public’s designation of gay people (especially men) as deviants, meant that a disease more common in gay men at the time wasn’t overly successful in garnering sympathy from the wider population (5). While that stigma still exists today, it is greatly diminished, especially in Western nations with more liberal ideologies. Additionally, ongoing HIV/AIDS education campaigns about transmission and harm reduction have been successful over the years, and information is now included in most science-based adolescent sex education (6).

The other factor is the minority status of the group most affected. Being openly “out” was less common than it is today, which was understandable given the increased risk of experiencing hate crimes and professional discrimination (5). A small population of activists may have been working to demonstrate HIV’s risks to everyone, including through asexual transmission, but strength in numbers was lacking. To many, HIV still did not affect them to a significant degree, and thus the HIV crisis was excluded from the same level of urgency afforded to problems affecting a larger population. 

This ties into the question of public health: how do we approach it with limited resources? There is an ongoing debate about whether it should be dealt with from an individual point of view or by looking at the benefits to the wider population, but regardless of institutional organisation, under no circumstance should care be based on whether the individual is part of an accepted group (7). In that case, it ceases to be a concern of allocation of rights, or obligation to provide rights, and instead becomes a direct attack on individual freedom and equality.

The issue of exclusion extends even deeper when an issue affects a non-minority group but is still unrecognized as being widespread, the most evident example of this being sex discrimination. We have progressed in leaps and bounds since the days of erasure and inaccurate canons of the female role in art, science, and politics, but as demonstrated by Caroline Criado-Perez’s Invisible Women, there remains a multitude of barriers around the world that prevent women, both directly and indirectly, from enjoying the same benefits that society has to offer men (8).

We still have overtly misogynistic behaviour: FGM, femicide, lack of access to birth control/abortion services, and the prevalent dichotomy of female slut-shaming versus the acceptance and even celebration of male sexual prowess (9). It’s the hidden barriers, however, that Invisible Women seeks to deconstruct. It’s the things that are unintentional results of a world where male-centric behaviours are so normalized that the insinuation of inequality sounds radical and disruptive, that walk the fine line between being brave feminism and a whiny “feminazism” (a term popularized  in 1992 by conservative radio host Riush Limbaugh) (10). The notion that women should be allowed to work, vote, and own property is no longer so controversial in the West, but proposing the allocation of money to research male-centric public transport infrastructure? Not so easy. The bias is undoubtedly there when you look at the numbers, but 1) a lot of people don’t have the training to understand the data (thankfully Criado-Perez is an excellent explainer), 2) it’s hard to genuinely portray the issue in an clickbait headline, and 3) in many cases, the data simply doesn’t exist, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s easier to omit gender-segregated data, but without it, there’s no proof that unintentional discrimination is occuring. The field of city planning is beginning to acknowledge it, but the revamp of said infrastructure is unlikely to be a quick process (8). 

While crisis can be adequately, and even universally, defined, there is no universal way to solve it, because the range of situations that crisis encompasses is broad to the point that it has been argued that the entirety of human existence has had a crisis of some sort occurring. However, drawing attention to the exclusion of underprivileged or underrepresented groups is essential in order to fully embody one of the only positive aspects of a crisis: communal and democratic effort. Crises should not be praised for having the silver lining of bringing everyone together if not everyone is brought together. We have seen incredible feats of teamwork and compassion across the world in the last year, but as long as inequality exists in the absence of a crisis, it will persist within crisis situations as well.

References

1. Koselleck R. Kritik und Krise. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta;.
2. Collins J. Volunteers rally to produce homemade face masks for coronavirus medical workers – Orange County Register [Internet]. Ocregister.com. 2021 [cited 26 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.ocregister.com/2020/03/25/volunteers-rally-to-produce-homemade-face-masks-for-coronavirus-medical-workers/
3. De Foe D. A journal of the plague year. London: E. Nutt; 1722.
4. Morris B. History of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Social Movements [Internet]. https://www.apa.org. 2021 [cited 26 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/history
5. Anthony A. ‘We were so scared’: Four people who faced the horror of Aids in the 80s [Internet]. the Guardian. 2021 [cited 26 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/31/we-were-so-scared-four-people-who-faced-the-horror-of-aids-in-the-80s
6. History of HIV and AIDS overview [Internet]. Avert. 2021 [cited 26 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/overview
7. O’NEILL O. The dark side of human rights. International Affairs [Internet]. 2005;81(2):427-439. Available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3568897?seq=1
8. Criado-Perez C. Invisible women. London: Chatto and Windus; 2019.
9. Endendijk J, van Baar A, Deković M. He is a Stud, She is a Slut! A Meta-Analysis on the Continued Existence of Sexual Double Standards. Personality and Social Psychology Review [Internet]. 2019 [cited 25 March 2021];24(2):163-190. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7153231/
10. Hesse M. Rush Limbaugh had a lot to say about feminism. Women learned how to not care. [Internet]. Washington Post. 2021 [cited 25 March 2021]. Available from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/rush-limbaugh-feminism-feminazis/2021/02/19/3a00f852-7202-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html

Over the past weeks, we have explored topics relating to the overarching theme of crisis and disease. The areas explored have been engaging, and opened my mind to things I previously I had not considered. I found myself most deeply engaging with topics which related to the experiences of women through crisis and disease. Predominantly, I found the topic of HIV/AIDS affected me quite deeply through my discovery of the HIV positive poet Mary Bowman.

Initially approaching the topic through Musa W. Dube’s anecdotal essay reflecting on the AIDS/HIV pandemic in Botswana, I was touched by the human experience of the virus. This led me to dig deeper, and find the work of Mary Bowman.

Dube’s text brings up many fascinating points on discourse surrounding the pandemic, particularly how language builds a narrative which extends to the national and social scale. A particularly poignant quotation which I’d like to unpack reads as follows:

“I describe HIV and AIDS as a text that wrote itself upon our physical and social bodies.”

Breaking this down, I’d like to think about the usage of the term “text” to describe HIV/AIDS, and the concept of physical and social bodies.

In this statement the pandemic is described as an active force acting “upon” the nation. There is a sense of the pandemic being central to the narrative of a nation’s identity through its description as a text in this active form. It is not a passive part of the nation’s story, but rather integral to it—the author seems to consider the pandemic as part of Botswana itself.

This gained further multitudes when I considered what could be meant by this idea of “physical and social bodies”. Clearly, HIV physically affects the body. However, Dube’s idea of the “social” body stood out as it gets to the root of what differentiates a pandemic from just a prevalent disease. A pandemic deeply affects these social bodies, whether these bodies be families, local communities, or otherwise.

The text goes on to consider “The historic discovery of HIV among gay communities, and later among other vulnerable communities such as sex workers and injecting drug addicts, seemingly associated the virus with sexual and moral discourse.” This furthers these ideas of the “social” body. A narrative was constructed which categorised the nation into groups of higher and lower morality, associating the virus with these groups.

This all gave a much greater sense to what Treichler perhaps meant writing “The AIDS epidemic is simultaneously an epidemic of a transmissible lethal disease and an epidemic of meanings or signification.” This writing of HIV as a text upon social bodies, separated by community, does indeed make it an epidemic of signification. Ingrained beliefs about the communities at the heart of the discovery of the virus adds signification upon both these communities, and upon the story of the virus itself.

The poetry of Mary Bowman reflects on these ideas, in a somewhat abstract way. The idea of HIV acting upon the “social” body is poignant here as Bowman was born HIV positive as a result of her mother’s drug addiction. In this case, the “social” body is that of the family. This poem, Dandelions, was Bowman’s way of revealing that she had lived with HIV her whole life, and the stigma surrounding the virus. Bowman’s mother died when the poet was just three as a result of complications. One line in particular stands out in light of Dube’s and Treichler’s ideas.

“I will gladly give myself as the sacrifice if it means that all the dandelions in the world become viewed as more than the consequence of sins behind closed doors.”

The experience of these two women—the woman speaking, and the woman spoken about—was deeply affective. A further topic which struck me was a discussion of women and how data affects diversity and equality.

A line from Simone de Beavoir’s introduction to her seminal work, The Second Sex, is a strong sounding off point for discussing this issue: “Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him.”

In this particular week’s lecture, the point was made that “as mathematical representations of how systems work, they are dependent on assumptions already written in”.

If the default assumption is man, how does this affect women? As de Beauvoir said, humanity is male. Language is gendered, “man” refers to humans. Alma Graham’s oft-quoted analogy is apt here:

“If a woman is swept off a ship into the water, the cry is ‘Man overboard!’ If she is killed by a hit-and-run driver, the charge is ‘manslaughter!’ If she is injured on the job, the coverage is ‘workman’s compensation!’ But if she arrives at a threshold marked ‘Men Only,’ she knows the admonition is not intended to bar animals or plants or inanimate objects. It is meant for her.” (Graham)

If the systems supposed to serve us begin at a point of masculinity, this harms women everywhere. A clear example of the ways in which quantifiable data harms women is the GDP.

The European Institute for Gender Equality has found that:

• Improving gender equality would lead to an increase in EU (GDP) per capita by 6.1 to 9.6%, which amounts to €1.95 to €3.15 trillion by 2050
• Improvements in gender equality would lead to an additional 10.5 million jobs in 2050
• Countries with more room to improve gender equality have much to gain. On average, improved gender equality in these countries is expected to lead to an increase in GDP of about 12% by 2050

The last point was especially significant to me, as I’m originally from Poland and current debate around women’s reproductive rights highlight just this. In January, a near total ban on abortion was passed. Further to this, a Government policy named 500 Plus awards families a benefit of 500PLN per month per child, a clear encouragement for women to stay home and be homemakers. This brings me to my main criticism of this EIGE study. It does not consider the impact which accounting for only male-dominated, classically value-creating activities, disregarding domestic and caregiving activities. Riane Eisler, author of The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, has conducted research which shows that were this caregiving and domestic work to be included in the GDP,  it would constitute between 30% and 50% of the GDP.

This is a blatant show of the ways in which data is skewed against women. This shows the ways in which the systems we base much of our daily life on, from the language we speak and how it is coded, to the world’s foremost economic indicator, are all rooted in the assumption of male as default.

To conclude, the topics which I felt most strongly engaged with were the human stories behind this overarching theme of disease and crisis, particularly the stories of women. Though seemingly disparate topics, both these areas covered stories of an entire cross-section of society disregarded, and how this can be rectified. In the case of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Bowman’s poem is a wishful one, hoping for an end to the stigma associated with the virus. In the case of the effect of data on gender equality, the prevailing story is also one of hope—of what can be gained if rather than perpetrating inequality, we recognise the failings of our current systems and remedy them.

References

Alexander, Reed. “Is One Of The World’s Most Widely Used Financial Metrics — GDP — Sexist?”. Marketwatch, 2021, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-one-of-the-worlds-most-widely-used-financial-metrics-gdp-sexist-2018-01-11.

Dube, Musa W. “The HIV and AIDS Collective Memory: Anecdotal Notes on Texts of Trauma, Care-Giving and Positive Living.” Botswana Notes and Records, vol. 48, 2016, pp. 435–438. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/90025361. Accessed 25 Mar. 2021.

“Economic Benefits Of Gender Equality In The EU”. European Institute For Gender Equality, 2021, https://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/policy-areas/economic-and-financial-affairs/economic-benefits-gender-equality.

Graham, Alma. “The Making Of A Nonsexist Dictionary”. Language And Sex: Difference And Dominance, B Thorne and N Henley, Newbury House Publishers, Rowley, Mass, 1975, Accessed 26 Mar 2021.

Treichler, Paula A. How To Have Theory In An Epidemic. Duke University Press, 1999, p. 11.

“Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him.” – Simone de Beavoir, The Second Sex.

In this week’s lecture, the point was made that “as mathematical representations of how systems work, they are dependent on assumptions already written in”.

If the default assumption is man, how does this affect women? As de Beauvoir said, humanity is male. Language is gendered, “man” refers to humans. Alma Graham’s oft-quoted analogy is apt here:

“If a woman is swept off a ship into the water, the cry is ‘Man overboard!’ If she is killed by a hit-and-run driver, the charge is ‘manslaughter!’ If she is injured on the job, the coverage is ‘workman’s compensation!’ But if she arrives at a threshold marked ‘Men Only,’ she knows the admonition is not intended to bar animals or plants or inanimate objects. It is meant for her.” (Graham)

If the systems supposed to serve us begin at a point of masculinity, this harms women everywhere. A clear example of the ways in which quantifiable data harms women is the GDP.

The European Institute for Gender Equality has found that:

• Improving gender equality would lead to an increase in EU (GDP) per capita by 6.1 to 9.6%, which amounts to €1.95 to €3.15 trillion by 2050
• Improvements in gender equality would lead to an additional 10.5 million jobs in 2050
• Countries with more room to improve gender equality have much to gain. On average, improved gender equality in these countries is expected to lead to an increase in GDP of about 12% by 2050

The last point was especially significant to me, as I’m originally from Poland and current debate around women’s reproductive rights highlight just this. In January, a near total ban on abortion was passed. Further to this, a Government policy named 500 Plus awards families a benefit of 500PLN per month per child, a clear encouragement for women to stay home and be homemakers. This brings me to my main criticism of this EIGE study. It does not consider the impact which accounting for only male-dominated, classically value-creating activities, disregarding domestic and caregiving activities. Riane Eisler, author of The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, has conducted research which shows that were this caregiving and domestic work to be included in the GDP,  it would constitute between 30% and 50% of the GDP.

This is a blatant show of the ways in which data is skewed against women. This shows the ways in which the systems we base much of our daily life on, from the language we speak and how it is coded, to the world’s foremost economic indicator, are all rooted in the assumption of male as default.

References
Graham, Alma. “The Making Of A Nonsexist Dictionary”. Language And Sex: Difference And Dominance, B Thorne and N Henley, Newbury House Publishers, Rowley, Mass, 1975, Accessed 26 Mar 2021.

“Economic Benefits Of Gender Equality In The EU”. European Institute For Gender Equality, 2021, https://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/policy-areas/economic-and-financial-affairs/economic-benefits-gender-equality.

Alexander, Reed. “Is One Of The World’s Most Widely Used Financial Metrics — GDP — Sexist?”. Marketwatch, 2021, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-one-of-the-worlds-most-widely-used-financial-metrics-gdp-sexist-2018-01-11.

The subject of this week feels especially topical right now, as President Biden has just signed the most significant expansion of healthcare provision in the United States since the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The American Rescue Plan is set to help 1.3 million Americans gain access to healthcare coverage. However, in light of the topics discussed, this seems to pale as an achievement. The ICESCR (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) has been ratified by 171 states. This protects ‘the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’. However, the United States is not one of the states which has ratified the covenant.

In a population counting approximately 331 people, healthcare cover for an additional 1.3 million sounds lacklustre. The question raised of what the ‘highest attainable standard of health’ quite means, and whether the same standard can be applied to rich as poor countries gains traction here. The USA has the highest GDP in the world, enjoying a 24% share of the world’s GDP (Worldometers). To be one of 24 states not part of the ICESCR is surprising.

Lamm raises some interesting points in his essay “The Case Against Making Healthcare a “Right””:

“How Do You Buy Health for Society? One inevitable result of the healthcare dialogue in other countries is that the focus shifts from the individual to the larger question of: How do you buy health for society? These nations have come to the common sense conclusion that public policy ought to maximize a nation’s health, not healthcare.”

The essay is an American based one, so we must keep in mind that the USA did not sign the ICESCR, however this distinction between health and healthcare is very much as at odds with the definition of health found in the covenant:

“Consequently, the right to health must be understood as a right to the enjoyment of a variety of facilities, goods, services and conditions necessary for the realization of the highest attainable standard of health.”

This appears to define health and healthcare much as one, symbiotic idea. To have health, one must have healthcare in direct correlation to a state’s provision. My personal opinion falls more in line with this. As the above image demonstrates, access to healthcare is a moral issue. This does not mean it is not political—political issues themselves are inherently moral. Etymologically, the two words are clearly related. “Political” quite literally means relating to the Greek politēs, or citizen. “Moral” comes from the Latin moralis, or “proper behavior of a person in society”. Healthcare is an issue affecting the welfare of all those in society, it is therefore a moral and political issue.

References
“GDP By Country – Worldometer”. Worldometers.Info, 2021, https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/.

Lamm, Richard D. “The Case Against Making Healthcare a ‘Right.’” Human Rights, vol. 25, no. 4, 1998, pp. 8–11. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27880117. Accessed 26 Mar. 2021.

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, as discussed in this weeks’ lecture, “is a literary work and no handbook for us, under COVID. But it can serve as the jumping off for contemporary reflections.”

Considering this with relation to the ideas of sovereignty and fantasies of power led me to seek out contemporary responses to those handling the current COVID pandemic, and see how our responses to power and sovereignty relate to those presented by Poe.

Firstly, I’d like to introduce a few headlines discussing the role of Boris Johnson in response to COVID.

Poe’s text shows sovereignty as fallible, with death holding ultimate sovereignty. This is exemplified in the following passage, during which Prince Prospero refers to the Red Death with terms such as “blasphemous mockery”:

““Who dares” — he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him – “who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him — that we may know whom we have to hang, at sunrise, from the battlements!””

Relating these ideas of sovereignty to today’s pandemic, it is interesting to note the partisan lines across which this sovereignty is afforded to our leaders. As in the above examples, one Spectator headline reads “Boris Johnson isn’t the only one to blame for Britain’s Covid Crisis”. Meanwhile, The Guardian is much more negative, with headlines such as “Johnson Marks Year Since First Lockdown—Knowing he Acted Far Too Late”. The two publications, on opposite sides of the political spectrum, clearly define the sovereignty of our political leaders very differently when it comes to their stand against our current “Red Death”.

Interestingly, The Spectator headline appears to paint Johnson as fallible, not entirely at fault for the COVID crisis. Here, though they are in support of Johnson, his sovereignty is not ultimate. The Guardian, however, despite being critical of Johnson paints him as an infallible figure. His shortcomings are seen as astute and ultimate. He is entirely to blame. He perhaps should be sovereign over the pandemic.

Though Poe’s text is a fantasy piece, the ideas of sovereignty it raises are very applicable to the ways we discuss political power today with regard to the Covid-19 pandemic.

References
Allegretti, Aubrey, and Jessica Elgot. “Covid: ‘Greed’ And Capitalism Behind Vaccine Success, Johnson Tells Mps”. The Guardian, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/23/greed-and-capitalism-behind-jab-success-boris-johnson-tells-mps.

Crace, John. “Johnson Marks Year Since First Lockdown – Knowing He Acted Far Too Late | John Crace”. The Guardian, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/23/boris-johnson-admits-he-will-forever-be-haunted-by-englands-covid-death-toll.

Cohen, Nick. Spectator.Co.Uk, 2021, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-isn-t-the-only-one-to-blame-for-britain-s-covid-crisis.

I’d like to base my response to this week’s topic heavily on Musa W. Dube’s anecdotal essay reflecting on the AIDS/HIV pandemic in Botswana.

The text brings up many fascinating points on discourse surrounding the pandemic, particularly how language builds a narrative which extends to the national and social scale. A particularly poignant quotation which I’d like to unpack reads as follows:

“I describe HIV and AIDS as a text that wrote itself upon our physical and social bodies.”

Breaking this down, I’d like to think about the usage of the term “text” to describe HIV/AIDS, and the concept of physical and social bodies.

In this statement the pandemic is described as an active force acting “upon” the nation. There is a sense of the pandemic being central to the narrative of a nation’s identity through its description as a text in this active form. It is not a passive part of the nation’s story, but rather integral to it—the author seems to consider the pandemic as part of Botswana itself.

This gained further multitudes when I considered what could be meant by this idea of “physical and social bodies”. Clearly, HIV physically affects the body. However, Dube’s idea of the “social” body stood out as it gets to the root of what differentiates a pandemic from just a prevalent disease. A pandemic deeply affects these social bodies, whether these bodies be families, local communities, or otherwise.

The text goes on to consider “The historic discovery of HIV among gay communities, and later among other vulnerable communities such as sex workers and injecting drug addicts, seemingly associated the virus with sexual and moral discourse.” This furthers these ideas of the “social” body. A narrative was constructed which categorised the nation into groups of higher and lower morality, associating the virus with these groups.

This all gave a much greater sense to what Treichler perhaps meant writing “The AIDS epidemic is simultaneously an epidemic of a transmissible lethal disease and an epidemic of meanings or signification.” This writing of HIV as a text upon social bodies, separated by community, does indeed make it an epidemic of signification. Ingrained beliefs about the communities at the heart of the discovery of the virus adds signification upon both these communities, and upon the story of the virus itself.

I’d like to end this post by sharing a poem by Mary Bowman, an American poet born HIV positive. This poem, Dandelions, was Bowman’s way of revealing that she had lived with HIV her whole life as a result of her mother’s drug addiction. Bowman’s mother died when the poet was just three as a result of complications. One line in particular stands out in light of Dube’s and Treichler’s ideas.

“I will gladly give myself as the sacrifice if it means that all the dandelions in the world become viewed as more than the consequence of sins behind closed doors.”

References

Dube, Musa W. “The HIV and AIDS Collective Memory: Anecdotal Notes on Texts of Trauma, Care-Giving and Positive Living.” Botswana Notes and Records, vol. 48, 2016, pp. 435–438. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/90025361. Accessed 25 Mar. 2021.

Treichler, Paula A. How To Have Theory In An Epidemic. Duke University Press, 1999, p. 11.