Will the "fight" ever end? : a critical reading of the metaphors and discourses that construct HIV/AIDS in an African context

In this thesis, I critically examine the discourses that inform how we conceptualise HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa as they are produced in a sample of Canadian news articles, two nonfiction texts - Stephanie Nolen's 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa and Jonathan Morgan and the Bambanani Women's Group's Long Life ... Positive HIV Stories - as well as two literary texts - John Le Carre's popular fiction novel The Constant Gardener and an anthology of stories and poems from Southern Africa titled Nobody Ever Said AIDS, compiled and edited by Nobantu Rasebotsa, Meg Samuelson and Kylie Thomas. Paying particular attention to the role of metaphor in discursive formation, I have found that military metaphors, usually used in conjunction with biomedical discourses, continue to dominate what is said about HIV/AIDS. However, the use of military metaphors to conceptualise HIV/AIDS contributes to stigma and limits the effectiveness of responses to the pandemic. I argue that accessing alternative metaphors and discourses, such as biopsychosocial discourse, can lead to a more layered - and more beneficial - conceptualisation of HIV/AIDS, encouraging a more active response to the pandemic.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A. English

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Faculty of Humanities

Department dc:contributor.department

Department of English

Grantor

Brock University

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Comfort, Laura.

• AIDS (Disease) in literature.
• AIDS (Disease)
• HIV infections
• Literature and society
• AIDS (Disease) and mass media

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10464/1497

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:brocku.scholaris.ca:10464/1497