Infected Affects on Transcriptions

This article is part of the following series: Infected Affects

In the Infected Affects series, we would like to bring together as wide a range of contributors as possible to give voice to the aporia surrounding the emotional life/lives of those living with HIV, and the emotions of those studying the epidemic and the effect(s) of their encounters with suffering on their work (inter alia, denial, elision, incoherence, depth and compassion). Topics might include: dying, palliation, non-adherence, care, bereavement, suffering, narratives of illness(es) and more. The intersection(s) between living (and dying) with HIV and poverty is crucial here. Contributions might take the form of interviews, book and article reviews, and links between scholarly and fictional writing (including the memoir). The realm of language in the construction of emotional affects is particularly important, as are the effects of living and/or dying with HIV being subsumed under the rubric of the ‘traumatic’. Other variations we hope to address include variation between children’s and adult’s emotional experiences, the role(s) of memorialisation and the ethics (and emotions) of ‘witnessing’.  For more than two decades, voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) was the dominant public health paradigm. We are interested in the underdocumented globalizing effects of this policy on ‘counselling’ which we understand to be the imposition of western cultural forms of psychological healing, personal narration and understanding on non western populations.

Infected Affects Editor: Ross Parsons