AIDS AND FEMINISMS

This essay focuses on the diverse, historically entangled, and paradoxical struggles for sub-Saharan African women in the wake of AIDS, its impacts, and its discourses.[1] My aim is to foster increased dialogues between AIDS analyses and a range of feminisms to elucidate that engagement with AIDS represents a political engagement. As part of political engagement, I argue that effective strategies to mitigate the impacts of AIDS require attention to feminist practice. I conceptualize feminist practice within the contours of African feminisms, thus outlining approaches which move away from certain elements of global feminisms of the past that have tended to dovetail into problematic first/third world division. The types of feminist practice approaches presented here help to understand that AIDS is not a single epidemic, just as feminism is not a single voice that can be posited from a particular part of the world. Instead African feminisms—and constructive ways to address AIDS—outline affinities and differences while also attending to the sundry mixture of divergences and paradoxes to build more pliable understandings of the complex issues sub-Saharan African women experience and face.

My interests are to map out further analytical tools which bring to the forefront enhanced understandings of hegemonic systems and structures; therefore, the feminist practice I describe privileges politically-focused, historically-situated, and experience-based analyses as strategies for dismantling that which reproduces unequal relations of power. Without such strategies, there is risk for sub-Saharan African women to emerge at the extremes; represented and analyzed as non-sexual, oppressed victims or at the other end of the extreme as hypersexual transmitters of disease. Each extreme problematically create notions of homogeneous female subjects—powerless and devoid of agency—and embeds their subjectivities in problematic forms of Western global feminisms.

I begin with an introduction which foregrounds questions concerning the use of gender as an analytical category for AIDS analyses in sub-Saharan Africa and do so largely through a discussion of Oyèrónké Oyêwùmi’s book The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997). Next, I outline what is meant by the term feminist practice. With an understanding of feminist practice in place, I then examination the complexities of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa from the perspectives of feminist practice. I do this in relation to: first, diverse struggles associated with political economy and gender; second, historical entanglements in Zimbabwe; and third, paradoxical dimensions of the Zimbabwean liberation war and the broader AIDS discourse.

Introduction: Making an African Sense of the Links Between AIDS and Gender

In 1985 roughly half a million women and half a million men were living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan; however, this balance is no longer the case as today nearly 60 percent of those living with HIV/AIDS in the region are women (UNAIDS 2004b). The percentages of women living with HIV/AIDS are greater in looking at specific generations. UNAIDS (2004b) research shows that among young people in sub-Saharan Africa (ages 15-24), 75 percent of those infected are women; young women are 2.5 times more likely to be infected than young men and adult women (ages 15-49) are 1.3 times more likely to be infected with HIV than adult men.

In sub-Saharan Africa the virus is most commonly transmitted to women through heterosexual sex, and women are biologically and socio-culturally more vulnerable to infection. Understandings of women’s higher biological vulnerability surfaced in the early 1990s. For example, Doyal (1994: 13) attributes this to “the fluid dynamics of unprotected sex.” She outlines how HIV concentrates more heavily in semen than in vaginal secretions, potentially infectious semen can remain on the surface of the vagina for some time, and vulnerability to infection is increased “due to greater permeability of the mucous membranes of the vagina compared with those of the penis” (1994: 3).

Through analysis of sex/sexuality and gender, many AIDS researchers argue that women are socio-culturally more vulnerable to infection (Akeroyd 1997; Baylies and Burja 2000; Schoepf 2004) and this represents a long-standing argument within much of the international donor community. For example, the 2004 UNAIDS report, “The Global AIDS Epidemic,” begins each of its seven chapters with a discussion of the growing “feminization of AIDS.” The report outlines why women have been disproportionately impacted, the micro and macro implications, and suggests intervention strategies based on their analyses. Central to this report is a discussion of how women’s socio-cultural vulnerabilities to HIV revolve around potential limits in access to: sexual health knowledge; control of their bodies; deciding the terms on which they have sex; economic opportunities; financial autonomy; formal education; and assistance with the multiple household and community roles they take on. Rao Gupta (2000) underscored these arguments in her Plenary Address at XIIIth International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa.

The statistics as well as my comments on women’s vulnerabilities indicate that there are ways in which gender is an important analytical category for AIDS in sub-Saharan African. However, the questions of gender and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa are more complex. To address the complexities requires discussion of the ways in which gender hierarchies were constructed, who and what did the constructing, and how this historization is an element of understanding gender in the present. Additionally, there is need to address constructions of Africa as the other and the ways in which Western domination mapped and continues to map destructive divisions of division onto Africa nations. To not do so positions a first/third world division as germane and as Craddock (2004: 4) points out “(would) aid in the reproduction of problematic colonial and postcolonial African representations, practices, and social politics.”

The questions of gender and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa stand to benefit from African feminisms and specifically investigations that involve questioning Western constructions of gender and knowledge production concerning Africa and Africans. The work of Oyèrónké Oyêwùmi provides a useful entry into such investigations (1997). She argues that the cultural logic of Western gender hierarchies is based on an ideology of biological determinism and through this argument she challenges the universality of constructions of gender difference on this basis. Her arguments open spaces to understand that gender categories, as well as the subordination of women, are not fixed in historical time and cultural space. The category of women is not pre-cultural and it is not a category universally in opposition to the category of man. Gender was not socially constructed in the site of Oyêwùmi’s investigation (pre-colonial Yorùbá society), as the categories of men and women as meaningful categories of difference did not exist. Rather gender difference was introduced through colonialism and “the creation of ‘women’ as a category was one of the very first accomplishments of the colonial state” (1997: 124).

Although Oyêwùmi’s discussions of the constructions of African Others represent a small section within the book, her claims resonate throughout and her history of gender discourses as she exposes Westerncentrisms within African studies. Not only does Oyêwùmi argue that the West is at the center of knowledge production concerning Africa, she is also critical of debates surrounding disproving claims that Africans are people without histories, without states, without philosophy. She claims this only furthers the legacy of African primitivism and Africa as the Other. In such debates, Africa remains positioned and identified with the West, scholars merely create African version of Western things, and African scholars fail to distinguish between universals and Western particulars. Oyêwùmi writes: “African thought has always focused not on difference from the West but on sameness with the West” (1997: 19 emphasis in original). In further describing the impacts and the intertwined complexities evident when the West is conceptualized as the center of knowledge production she writes:

Oyêwùmi’s arguments are critical for the interaction between feminist practice and understandings of the impacts of AIDS on women; they move analyses of AIDS in important directions. First, as an effective form of critiquing Western feminisms, Oyêwùmi’s text opens spaces for further theorizing and integrating African feminisms into feminist practice. Second, Oyêwùmi’s history of gender discourses helps scholars to further understand that yes, there is a link between gender and AIDS; however, analyses will more effectively inform practice if contexualized historically. Third, her attention to the question of knowledge production is critical for elucidating the connections between AIDS and problematic first/third world division.

Projects similar to that of Oyêwùmi are evident across a range of scholarship on African feminisms and represent valuable elements for engagements with AIDS. For example, Nnaemeka (1995, 1998, 2004) describes African feminisms as the feminism of negotiation or nego-feminism. Central for Nnaemeka are examinations of colonial moments, the politics of fieldwork, and the politics of representing feminist scholarship. Mikell (1997) refers to African feminisms as the politics of survival. Central for Mikell are examining the ways in which public participation for women is complicated by the paradox of independence and unpacking how economic dependence and persistent gender hierarchies burden women. Collectively, these types of analytics represent crucial aspects of feminist practice; they foster understandings of AIDS in its relationships to material, symbolic, and discursive forces, each of which potentially hinder the opportunities and choices available to women. In important ways AIDS can be conceptualized, not only as a disease impacting women, but also as a series of moments, events, and processes which are profound and constantly shifting given relationships to geopolitical socio-economics, ideologies, knowledge production, and corporate practices. The hope is for further developing specific analytical tools that can be tactically deployed, yet at the same time, inform interventions in ways so as to address what drives the reproduction of unequal relations of power and universalizing tendencies of dominant Western cultures.

Dialogues: Feminist Practice & Moving Away From First/Third World Division

It is important to layout what is meant by the term feminist practice and how I envision attention to feminist practice facilitating moves away from problematic first/third world division. This discussion involves recognition that many AIDS experts seek to intervene and respond to a crisis situation, and given the severity of AIDS there is a sense of urgency at work. Theory, it is claimed, is not well positioned to respond to urgency because theory tends to frame AIDS, following Treichler (1999: 1), as an “epidemic of signification. . . . (an epidemic which has produced) a parallel epidemic of meanings, definitions, and attributions.” Framing AIDS in these ways highlight that AIDS, not only spurs intrigue and critique among socio-cultural theorists, but also AIDS brings forth tensions between theory and practice. This dynamic marks AIDS as a topic demanding the attention of theorists while at the same time humbling theorists, as Treichler (1999: 2) writes:

The claim that theory is not proactive while practice addresses immediate concerns plays a role in putting AIDS analyses and feminisms in dialogue and developing effective strategies for addressing AIDS. The point here is not to debate what is theory, what is practice, and why the two may be different to the extent of taking sides; this would be divisive. In fact, many scholars no longer explicitly address the theory/practice tension; however, by seeking ways to move beyond taking sides in a constructed divide, scholars implicitly acknowledge the tension. Among some scholars the move to not take sides and to avoid divisiveness has involved use of the term “feminisms” as a way to emphasize that in the context of either theory or practice a single feminism is neither a practical nor a feasible goal. In fact historical analysis of feminist movements in the United States during the latter half of the 20th century indicate that multiple feminisms have emerged (Roth 2004). Among other scholars increasing use of the term “practice” implies a similar emphasis in relation to the plurality of feminist movements and also points to an important shift. In either situation, as Nnaemeka (2004) argues any feminism—as theory or practice—must consider the interrelationships of knowledge production and methodologies. The methodology of Nnaemeka (2004) suggests that research and knowledge production stem from a space that considers, yet exists outside the theory/practice tension and the first/third world division.

Following shifts toward the use of the terms “feminisms” and “practice” and in light of the methodology Nnaemeka (2004) outlines, my interests lie in the ways feminist theories influence what occurs in practice. Throughout this essay I do not use the term feminist theories to reference ways research on AIDS ought to be grounded. To date, theory alone has not brought an end to AIDS epidemics; nor will theory alone do so in the future. However, theory has a role in the fight against AIDS. In its multiplicities, theory possesses the potential to effectively inform practice. In turn, this facilitates transformations of the biomedical, economic, political, and socio-cultural events and processes which fuel the spread and impacts of epidemics and shape the discourse.

With the term feminist practice, I maintain that AIDS research requires integration of theories in ways that recognize and allow for involvement in individual and collective socio-political action and intervention enacted through practice. In the context of AIDS, feminist practice considers the barriers and risks that those impacted face in their everyday lives as well as the larger systemic issues which structure their lives. Following King (1995), I maintain that theory exists in practice.

To highlight the ways that theory exists in practice and to capture different forms of resistance, I situate feminist practice as unfolding projects in that analyses consider actions people take. In the case of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, feminist practice highlights the ways in which women are increasingly vocal in relation to their socio-cultural, personal, economic, and political challenges. Their voices are one aspect of the many dimensions of feminist practice. Here, Mohanty’s (2003) definition of feminist practice is useful for highlighting where and how resistance, and its relationship to practice, are enacted.

By laying out definitions of feminist practice and applying the discussion to AIDS, my aim is to continue to ease the theory/practice tension and develop a space, such as Nnaemeka’s (2004) third space or Mohanty’s (2003) multiple levels to further integrate feminist practice into AIDS research. My use of the term feminist practice over feminist theories is not meant to take the practice side in a theory/practice debate. On the contrary, the focus here concerns the ways in which theoretically-informed feminist practice has the potential to turn the tide for those impacted by AIDS. I reference the theory/practice tension to emphasize that productively embracing the tension constitutes an important dimension of increasing the dialogue between feminisms and AIDS analyses. In certain ways, my call for feminist practice may constitute a framework, yet as Nnaemeka (1998: 5) states:

As part of arguing for a “dynamic theater of action,” feminist practice represents a political practice tied to the critical study of contemporary global conditions of postmodernity; a pursuit of the question Grewal and Kaplan (1994:3) pose: “What kinds of feminist practices engender theories that resist and question modernity?” Mikell (1997: 1) articulates the complexities of Grewal and Kaplan’s question for African feminisms as she suggests “contemporary African women sometimes think of themselves as walking a political/gender tightrope.” On one hand, women are concerned with the socio-political and economic barriers and risks faced in everyday life which are embedded in and intensified by larger systemic inequities that impact and structure their lives. At the same time, women seek spaces to affirm their own identities and further unravel the gendered dimensions of the struggles they face. Mikell describes this tightrope with gender asymmetry and inequalities in the context of the relationship between the private and public domains. For African women, gender and sex roles are connected to the dichotomy of domestic/public, thus Mikell’s notion of the politics of survival develops into an African-feminist approach to public and private life. In further elucidating the complex dimensions of these domains and the dichotomy she writes:

Mikell’s arguments indicate the need for asking where knowledge derives from and in turn giving attention to historical contextualization. Nnaemeka (2004) argues that any feminisms must consider knowledge production and aptly notes that “knowledge as a process is a crucial part of knowledge as a product” (2004: 363). With these analytic strategies in mind, the feminist practice I argue for takes on critical examinations within the context of unequal relations of power and provides avenues to articulate critiques of Western feminisms allowing for moves so as to reside in a space separate from the embeddedness of first/third world division.

Diverse Struggles

The impacts of AIDS are felt within individual and collective experiences interconnected to broader and highly diverse struggles. In light of this, AIDS is not merely a disease to be studied in isolation; rather there is a need to critically examine the processes framing and transcending medical moments. Analyses require historically contextual attention to particular economic, political, and socio-cultural issues across and in their intersections with the public and private domains. Kreniske (1997:35) effectively describes this as the social study of health and illness.

By giving attention to the social study of health, and through a discussion of structural vulnerabilities, external debt, and gender, in this section I outline the political economic dimensions of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Central to my analysis is outlining the ways in which collectively these interrelated examinations inform feminist practice thus integrating the political economy of AIDS with the socio-cultural and political economic and dimensions of gender.

Political Economy Through the Lens of Structural Vulnerabilities

Mukherjea (2004: 12) argues that, “the epidemiology of AIDS has, paradoxically, neglected the sick.” Although her argument concerns access to medications, it is also useful to consider what else is sick and neglected other than people amidst AIDS epidemics. Here I am not speaking medically; rather I am referencing structural and systemic neglect creating specific conditions akin to sickness. In sub-Saharan Africa, economic, political, and socio-cultural factors shape AIDS and the impacts are transmitted through processes which restrict access to opportunities in areas such as education and increase inequities in terms of economic autonomy.

For example, the Gross National Product (GNP) of sub-Saharan Africa is 10 percent of the world average, yet in many rural areas, women account for 70 percent of the agricultural labor force and 80 percent of food production (UNAIDS 2002a). As AIDS increases illness among family members, women are often required to boost their level of agricultural productivity in tandem with taking on additional responsibilities, such as care giving. As caring for family members falls primarily on women, girls are often removed from school to assist with care-giving. Without access to education, girls are less likely to develop the knowledge and skills that would help them pursue employment and thus less likely to gain economic independence or increase their economic status. Scenarios such as this occur to the extent that we might say that a neglectful and sick system creates structural vulnerabilities for women.

In many respects my use of “structural vulnerabilities” follows the work of Farmer (1999, 2003) and his use the term “structural violence.” He argues that sickness—which may in part be medically due to being HIV-positive—is also the result of processes of power that fuel inequities. These processes and forces play integral roles in constraining individual agency and Farmer (1999: 79) comments, “Structural violence is visited upon all those whose social status denies them access to the fruits of scientific and social progress.”

My variation on Farmer’s (1999; 2003) term serves as a strategy to develop a specific emphasis. The term “structural violence” might be read as referencing overt acts of violence, which warrant attention in understandings of the impacts of AIDS. However, my emphasis lies, not in overt acts of violence, but in unraveling the socio-historical processes undergirding and transforming the present day economic, political, and socio-cultural terrain of individuals and communities. For example, in her analysis of the impacts of adult female mortality at the household level in Zimbabwe, Mutangadura (2001) argues that surviving children are increasingly faced with having less food and inadequate shelter along with potentially being removed from school and forced into employment in the informal sector. Her study of 215 households[2] reveals the potential long-term impacts for surviving children.

While Mutangadura focuses largely on how AIDS impacts children, her analysis also points to the ways in which households slide deeper into poverty. As AIDS-related illnesses take hold, households are left with a depleted or absent productive adult population as well as a weakened bridge to pass down knowledge generationally. This signals the beginning of a historical process in which future generations are being forced to cope with an altered terrain in terms of their economic and socio-cultural livelihood. In sub-Saharan Africa there are 12 million children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS (UNAIDS 2004b). In the coming years the crucial questions involve how communities and countries will structurally and systemically ensure that these children are provided the opportunities to become self-sufficient and productive members of society. There is often no overt violence causing households to slide into poverty or children to be orphaned; rather what is evident is a process in which household dynamics are changing and children are increasingly reliant upon structural assistance. Thus, I prefer the term “structural vulnerabilities” so as to direct attention at structural and systemic neglect.

As scholars engage with AIDS by building on political economy frameworks, feminist practice mirrors what Craddock (2004: 6) refers to as a “cultural political economy of vulnerability framework.” In this framework, teasing out vulnerabilities exposes systemic and structural forces and the ways in which the impacts of AIDS are felt through struggles interconnected to larger inequities. Singer (1997) provides further understanding of the ways in which specific social conditions of inequality fuel the spread of the epidemic. The nuances of increasing AIDS prevalence rates and the impacts of the epidemics are apparent through critical examination of inequality as embedded in political and economic forces aimed at serving the interests of those with power who dominate at the expense of marginalized groups. As such, analyses of AIDS which look narrowly at a disease as a biological entity and a social problem which can be reversed medically fail to give the necessary attention to what Singer (1997: 227) describes as “forces that constrain life choices . . . and block their access to the health and social services that would enable them to stay healthier longer.

Both Craddock (2004) and Singer (1997) are putting forth frameworks which point to macro-level political economic concerns and open space for examining the ways in which AIDS is emerging as a crisis of human capacity. In much of sub-Saharan Africa, not only is absenteeism from work increasing, the loss of supervisors has also produced a ripple effect as the acquired knowledge and skills of supervisors are seldom replaced simply by hiring others. For example, in Malawi the annual loss of governmental employees increased nearly six fold from 1990 to 2000 primarily due to premature AIDS-related deaths (UNDP 2002). Additionally, in examining the impacts of AIDS on the agricultural sector in Eastern and Southern Africa, Topouzis (2003) argues that AIDS-related illness and death among governmental employees has destabilized local and national capacity and production. Her data reveals that in the past five years AIDS caused 58 percent of staff deaths in the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture while in Malawi’s Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, 16 percent of the staff were HIV-positive. In broader strokes, 2003 data from the International Labor Organization (ILO) indicates that sub-Saharan Africa will loose 12 percent of its workforce by 2015.

For feminist practice, attention to a crisis of human capacity also involves examining the ways in which first world interventions—such as behavior-change prevention models—potentially fail to consider the links of macro-level political economic concerns and vulnerabilities. The behavior-change logic posits that preventing an infectious virus, such as HIV, requires avoiding risky behaviors that increase chances of infection. Subsequently, prevention is linked to increased awareness of risky behaviors and education on how to change them. The problem here is that awareness and education are of little or no value when it is a person’s poverty and lack of access to education and economic opportunities positioning them as vulnerable to HIV infection. The behavior-change logic has made important steps in rethinking the concepts of “risky” and “behaviors,” and the more astute analyses integrate the concept of vulnerabilities. In fact Mann (1991) was one of the first AIDS experts to advocate for such a shift when he drew attention to the potential problems with “just say no” behavior-change prevention approaches and called for researchers to

Subsequently, Mann and Tarantola (1992) proposed that vulnerability to HIV ought to be conceptualized in terms of three interdependent levels: personal, programmatic, and societal. The importance of this shift was in recognizing that vulnerabilities do not equate to personal choice, behavior or practice; rather vulnerabilities are often the result of structural barriers. In terms of vulnerabilities to HIV, risk has more to do with situations and specific socio-economic conditions, as Basu (2004: 15) notes, HIV transmission increases in “a context where the movement of capital is privileged above the ability of persons to secure their own livelihoods.”

Political Economy Through the Lens of External Debt

In sub-Saharan Africa 290 million people live, on average, on less than US$30 per month (UNAIDS 2004a) making it difficult to pay for AIDS medications. The problem is, however, a broader problem of access to adequate healthcare combined with limited government financial resources to provide public healthcare. In sub-Saharan Africa, each of the 44 nations spend approximately US$13.5 billion per year to repay foreign debts,[3] thus monies are diverted from healthcare, which fundamentally undermines the fight against AIDS epidemics. External debt constitutes an issue interconnected to AIDS and necessitates historical attention to the neocolonialist project of foreign loan schemes.

Loans to African nations were intended to foster political and economic stabilization in post-independence, yet debt-relief activists argue that loans were granted without adequate thought to their goals or to recipients’ abilities for repayment. As effects of the 1970s oil crisis took hold in the 1980s, the debt crisis heightened and the ratios of foreign debt to Gross National Product (GNP) increased from 51 percent in 1982 to 100 percent in 1992 (Colgan 2001) while debt increased to four times export income in the early 1990s (Stanford 1998). By 1998, sub-Saharan Africa's total debt was approximately US$236 billion (APIC 1998). With external debt in place, the impacts of AIDS can be seen in inequalities embedded in the political economic terrain. These forces operate in the present as much as they are part of past socio-historical events that played a role in creating and reinventing the present day terrain of the vulnerable.

In a 2001 position paper on Africa’s debt, the advocacy organization Africa Action questioned the legitimacy of the loans and repayment schemes. The position paper delineated five principles that enhance understanding of the political and socio-economic terrain in which African nations must navigate as they combat AIDS epidemics. Africa Action contended the debt must be considered illegitimate on grounds of the circumstances under which African countries incurred debt, in acknowledgement of errors by borrowers and lenders, and due to the harmful effects of the debt. The illegitimacy of the debt was based on the following principles (Colgan 2001).

The issue of external debt warrants more detailed analyses than the scope of this essay allows. I have used this summary to highlight that it is an underlying dimension of a system that is sick to the extent of being implicated in the very processes rendering people structurally vulnerable to HIV. My summary also emphasizes the heavy burdens debt places on African nations and that most nations do not have the resources to address these burdens. External debt in combination with AIDS undermines countries’ efforts to reduce poverty and provide the healthcare needed for those living with HIV/AIDS. For example, in an analysis of debt and health care in Kenya, Kimalu (2003: 3) argues “debt has restricted the fiscal space available for investment in basic services, with excessive debt servicing undermining access to health and education.” His data indicates that Kenya, a nation with a US$4.0 billion debt as of 1999, spends US$0.76 per capita on AIDS, and US$12.92 per capita on debt repayments. The United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is an important step to provide financial resources for additional AIDS interventions. However, with the burdens of debt, PEPFAR may not be enough. The 14 countries that will receive PEPFAR funds together spent US$9.1 billion in servicing their debt in 2001 (Ogden and Esim 2003), yet the allocation of PEPFAR funds stand at US$2.4 billion and US$2.8 billion for 2004 and 2005, respectively.[4]

More Nuanced Ways to Use Gender as an Analytical Category

As we enter the third decade of AIDS, more supple analyses are crucial. A sole (and narrow) reliance on political economy traverses a dangerous path of objectifying women as victims inescapably caught in webs of inequities. This further stigmatizes women by merely producing statistics about their poverty. In the earlier years of epidemics this victimization and stigmatization were common problems. Social scientific research was largely deployed as part of producing statistical data in relation to epidemiological patterns. Social scientists were silenced and forced into the paradigm of biomedicine; at times unintentionally part of what Akeroyd (1997:27) calls:

The fight against AIDS represents a political fight for social change. Part of the fight requires challenging the dominance of the biomedical paradigm and addressing how and why women are more vulnerable to HIV. The fight also necessitates being attentive to ways in which men and women, in diverse locations, are vulnerable to HIV because of specific conditions and hegemonic systems that structure their lives. As Treichler (1999) points out, on the one hand, the relevance of gender lies in the disproportionate impacts on women in the context of epidemics that exist today; yet on the other hand, we must think of gender and AIDS in terms of the historization and discursive features of gender as a category. She comments that, “AIDS is complex, in part, because it exposes the artificiality of the categories and divisions that govern our views of social life and sexual difference” (1999: 96). Additionally, addressing the artificiality of categories involves critical examinations of knowledge production and knowledge claims. Treichler (1999: 33) describes the relevance of such focus through an argument that the AIDS discourse fosters misrepresentations.

As feminist practice integrates theories on gender, it is crucial that gender difference not be reduced to biological difference. In the context of AIDS, gender must be conceptualized in relation to differences in access and power. Part of this concpetualization requires an understanding that gender differences may not have historically existed universally; however, present day gender hierarchies inform the ways in which individuals interact as well as shape distinctions in terms of access to productive resources and decision-making authority. Feminisms have consistently argued that gender differences exist due to varying roles and behaviors; differences are shaped by power imbalances and gender difference is socially constructed. Today, the framework of social constructionism remains an integral aspect of discussions and Lorber (1994) argues that as a social institution, gender parallels formal structures such as language, religion, or the economy.

As a system of social stratification, gender, Lorber (1994) claims, must be examined as a hierarchical and structurally enforced form of difference where analyses consider life’s everyday interactions. Attention must be given to the ways in which individuals may be vulnerable along with analyses of how stratification and inequalities are embedded in socio-cultural, political, and economic institutions.

Increasingly scholars have recognized that the social constructionism framework is relevant, not only to gender difference, but to difference more broadly. Productively, this opens the door for contextually specific understandings of inequities. For example, Moore (1994) argues that difference is not a matter of categorical groupings; rather conceptualizations of difference stem from processes that identify and marginalize.

In highlighting arguments that gender is a constructed relational from of difference, I am emphasizing that the connections of AIDS and gender do not equate to an isolated focus on women. Understanding gender as a constructed relational form of difference highlights that the connections of AIDS and gender encompass what Schoepf (2001: 345) referred to as “the embodiment of inequality represented by HIV and AIDS.” I am exposing that gender as an analytical category is often misapprehended in analyses of AIDS, but my intention is not to argue for abandoning gender as an analytical category. In fact to do so, would contradict one of the primary arguments in this essay, that gender differences bear relevance for apprehending how women are structurally vulnerable to HIV. What I am suggesting is that once analyses of gender and AIDS are adequately put forth, the discussion is not neatly about gender. Rather it is a discussion of the gendered ways in which structures and systems position individuals as vulnerable as well as a discussion of how AIDS intensifies vulnerabilities in gendered ways. Of particular importance is investigating the ways in which gendered barriers have been implanted to the extent that they prevent access to knowledge and opportunities such as sexual health information, control of one’s body, deciding the terms of sex, employment, financial autonomy, and formal education.

Grewal and Kaplan (1994) began their discussion of feminist practice by stating, “we were looking for ways to broaden and deepen analyses of gender in relation to a multiplicity of issues that affect women’s lives” (1994: 1). I am posing the same challenge, to broaden and deepen analyses of the connections of AIDS and gender. Specifically, I am making two arguments. First, AIDS and gender represent, individually and interrelatedly, processes that continually feed back on each other and generate new realities. Second, AIDS represents a set of gendered epidemics, but analyses must not equate gender to an isolated focus on women. To elaborate these two arguments it is useful to again turn to Grewal and Kaplan. They challenge U.S. feminists to move beyond the trinity of race-class-sex and argue for “more nuanced and complex theories of social relations” (1994: 19). They are also interested in addressing “scattered hegemonies which are the effects of mobile capital as well as the multiple subjectivities that replace the European unitary subject” (1994: 7). Their framework suggests that understanding and dismantling hegemonies fueling the pervasiveness of AIDS for women cannot occur solely through gender analyses, particularly if analyses fail to consider the generation of new realities and privilege gender as an isolated focus on women. In conceptualizing feminist practice as a political engagement, Grewal and Kaplan (1994: 17) further highlight what must be privileged.

The political economy of AIDS represents a situation of postmodernity and a condition which structure women’s lives. In the context of AIDS, gender must be conceptuzalized in relation to differences in access and power. As a socio-cultural construction differentiating men and women, gender difference may not have historically existed universally; however, in the present gender hierarchies shape interactions between individuals and in turn impact women’s access to productive resources and decision-making authority.

Historical Entanglements

In this section my analysis is informed by Trouillot’s (1995) four moments of historical production: fact creation, fact assembly, fact retrieval, and retrospective significance. In describing these moments as co-dependent conceptual tools, he positions them as allowing for an understanding that “any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences, the result of a unique process” (1995: 26). In moments of the present, AIDS is understood in specific ways; at the same time, knowledge claims made in the present are informed by representations and unique processes of the past.

Through a discussion of compulsory medical exams for Africans in colonial Zimbabwe I suggest that new understandings of sex/sexuality and gender became subsumed into the capitalist development model of the colonizers. British and Rhodesian colonial officials posited a problematic link between female sexuality and the male labor force largely as a way to control male and female bodies. The desire for this control was framed as a way to ensure access to cheap and disease-free labor; yet the control became a site in which new forms of gendered and racial difference were mapped onto African bodies. The relevance here is that, in similar ways to and informed by the past, the AIDS discourses of the present also foster misrepresentations to the point that AIDS has emerged as a means to regulate bodies and sex/sexuality. Next I discuss historical entanglements associated with existing laws, what can be called legal dualisms. I suggest that the Zimbabwean Legal Age Majority Act (LAMA)—an act whose intention is to grant equity for women—represents an example of a historically entangled legal dualism and has emerged as a structural vulnerability for women.

Compulsory Medical Exams in Colonial Zimbabwe

Vaughan (1991) argues that colonial rule was a set of objectifying processes. These processes served as a means to create sexual subjectivities and took hold through the production of sexualized difference. The impacts of this production implanted differences in that “Africans, it seems, in this socio-medical discourse, never get sick innocently” (1991: 205). In this argument, Vaughan follows the work of Gilman (1985); specifically that blackness and hyper-sexuality have been problematically inextricably interrelated. Vaughan (1991:2) summarizes Gilman’s (1985: 25) arguments concerning how difference was projected on an Other.

Here I examine a 1922 British colonial law requiring that all African men and women be given medical exams prior to securing employment. By 1958 compulsory medical exams for Africans were no longer required in colonial Zimbabwe; however, I suggest that, parallel to the analyses of Gilman (1985) and Vaughan (1991), the medical exams produced gendered, racial, and sexualized difference. Of concern here is that there are ways in which the 1922 law and the surrounding discourse has informed representations of AIDS in Africa. For example, mobile women, single mothers, and sexually active women are often seen as target groups likely to transmit HIV unless their behaviors and bodies are controlled; these target groups represent the Others who are perceived to never get sick innocently. Representations emerging from target groups at risk are in themselves damaging, additionally as Craddock (2004 :4) argues such representations reproduce “images of Africans as ignorant, hypersexual, and culturally backward.” In what follows, I show that the discourse surrounding medical exams in colonial Zimbabwe informed representations of women as non-natives, mobile, and vectors of disease.

In 1893 Cecil Rhodes and the British South African Company (BSA) took control of Rhodesia, the region which is today Zimbabwe and Zambia. Anti-colonial struggles resulted in the division of the region into Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia in 1898. This early division did not bring about socio-political independence or freedom from colonial oppression. Instead the division created the two colonies of Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia, each independently ruled by Rhodesians first with the backing of the BSA and subsequently the British government. In 1964 political independence was granted to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) resulting in Southern Rhodesia adopting the name Rhodesia. As such, my considerations here are the colonial context of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), which gained independence through a 1979 internal political agreement and was renamed the nation-state Zimbabwe/Rhodesia. In 1980 Rhodesia was dropped from the name as part of the independence celebration.

During the colonial period in Zimbabwe an infrastructure grounded in capitalist development was entrenched. Barnes (1999) describes this period as a process in which colonialism moved through an initial stage of conquest to a phase of consolidation, specifically the consolidation of traditional African law and British general law into customary law.

In the early years of the colonial capitalist structure, Jackson (2002:193) argues women were not considered units of production and “were treated as extensions of these African male bodies.” Schmidt (1992) echoes this point in arguing colonial officials were willing to institute regulations to control female sexual practices as a way to ensure their access to male labor.

Jackson (2002) and Schmidt (1992) each argue that as part of the capitalist infrastructure, colonial rule in Zimbabwe fueled representations of men as the privileged labor source whereas women were represented as embodying the biology necessary for reproducing the nation. At one level, the representation of men as labor and women as reproducers was enacted through policies restricting women’s access to formal employment. At a second level, nuanced analyses of the gender division of labor in colonial Zimbabwe also point to the ways that colonial officials sought to privilege male bodies and control female bodies.

While colonial rule prevented women from being incorporated into the socio-economic sphere as labor producers, paradoxically, citizenship regulations granted women greater levels of mobility. This mobility had benefits in terms of expanded options for informal employment (Barnes 1999; Schmidt 1992); however, this mobility also fueled a belief that women were a threat to male labor production via the transmission of disease. As a structure informed by the ideology of civilizing the native population, British colonial rulers sought to control the actions of its subjects and the spaces they occupied. Ordinance 16 of 1901 limited women’s access to employment and worked to control their bodies and sexuality, as the regulation issued registration passes for African males only. Jackson (2002: 192) notes that the ordinance stated, “No native, not being a married woman whose husband is in employment in the township, shall remain within the limits of any township to which this ordinance applies.” She argues that the effects of the ordinance were to position African women not only as non-native, but paradoxically to strengthen the jural minor status of African women by granting women more freedom to move about.

In some respects, African women were granted freedoms to be unattached; however, as mobile women, Jackson (2002: 191) argues, “They were inscribed into colonial spaces as ‘stray women’ who according to the colony’s medical director from 1896 to 1929, were responsible for ‘spreading disease all over the country.’” Statements such as those of the colonial medical director were a misrepresentation and Jackson’s archival research indicates as much. In 1929 Dr. Andrew Fleming compiled his findings and indicated that from January to May 1929, 684 women had been examined in Bulawayo and there were four cases of venereal disease. In reporting this data to the colonial secretary, Fleming’s memo stated the venereal disease problem was due to “stray women… spreading disease all over the country” (Jackson 2002: 201).

In an effort to control the health risks that women’s mobility was believed to present to African men, in 1922 colonial officials instituted a regulation requiring that African men and women submit to medical exams. For men, the compulsory medical exam was designed to ensure men were healthy so they could be used as a cheap source of labor.

Compulsory medical exams for African women were in effect venereal disease exams and came to be called chibeura (trans., “to open something, often with force”) by many Zimbabwean women. In Jackson’s analysis of the experiences of women subjected to this regulation, she demonstrates that the exams represented a form of gender violence, specifically one that regulated and controlled female bodies and female sexuality in the interests of preserving a healthy male labor force. At the same time, a central paradox emerged in that British colonial rule sanctioned the mobility of African women, while colonial medical discourse subjecting women to jural minor status fueled a negative representation of the mobility of African women. Mobility came to signal disease.

Jackson’s analysis of women’s experiences with chibeura highlight an important line of investigation for feminist practice, that being attention to the socio-historical processes intertwined with colonial medical discourse and the ways in which these processes and discourses inform knowledge production in the present. It is not simply a matter of uncovering vestiges of colonialism; rather the more profound project involves dismantling misguided knowledge stemming from past socio-historic processes which potentially increase stigmatization and intensify the impacts AIDS.

Legal Dualisms and the Zimbabwean Legal Age Majority Act (LAMA)

As I have already discussed, Sub-Saharan African women are structurally vulnerable to HIV infection in relation to political economic factors, in some cases due to restricted access to education, thereby limiting opportunities for economic autonomy. I also emphasized that external debt represents an underlying economic factor intensifying the impacts of AIDS. However, the impacts of AIDS ought not to be analyzed in a vacuum of the economic side of political economy. Political and judicial systems of a nation-state also represent domains which may create structural vulnerabilities for women. Of particular concern here is vagueness in existing laws and specifically exposing legal dualisms. Examining legal dualisms widens the scope of political economic approaches and integrates a larger web of structural vulnerabilities that women face. In this regard, here I discuss the Zimbabwean Legal Age Majority Act (LAMA), specifically its history and the ways in which it is being selectively interpreted.

With the adoption of LAMA in 1982, Zimbabwe was touted as a leader among postcolonial nations in codifying equal rights for women. The act provided for all Zimbabweans—female, male, African, or white—to attain full adult status at the age of eighteen. As adults, women gained rights, without male consent, to own property, to enter into contracts, and to make legally enforceable decisions. However, interpretations of the act are increasingly based on selective understandings of the intentions of the act and judicial authorities argue that customary law supersedes LAMA. I suggest that, although the act intended to grant equity for women, today the act represents a legal dualism and a structural vulnerability for women.

The March 1999 Zimbabwean Supreme Court ruling in the Magaya vs. Magaya case (a 5-0 decision) provides one example of legal dualism in play. As the only child from her father's first marriage, Ms. Venia Magaya claimed status as heir and was appointed by the community court when her father died intestate. One of her three half-brothers from her father’s second marriage objected on grounds that not all the family had been notified of the proceedings. Ms. Magaya’s appointment was cancelled, and upon application her half-brother, as the oldest claiming male child, was granted status as heir under customary law and he proceeded to evict Ms. Magaya from her house. Upon Ms. Magaya’s challenge, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the custom of male preference for heirship, even when there is senior female offspring. In short, paradoxically, the Supreme Court ruled that LAMA does not provide for women to be treated as adults under customary law.

In addition to the ruling in this case, the Supreme Court reversed a series of its own earlier decisions which granted rights to females, claiming they were an over-expansive interpretation of LAMA. The claim was that Parliament did not intend LAMA to eliminate male preference and grant women rights they did not have under customary law, but only to grant civil legal status to women so they could enter into contracts and bring lawsuits. The Supreme Court indicated that past cases allowing women to sue for inheritance of property were wrongly decided.

Although the Magaya vs. Magaya case does not involve AIDS, the Supreme Court’s ruling is potentially damaging in relation to women whose husbands die of AIDS. In a country where one million men are living with HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS 2004b), Zimbabwean women stand to confront political and legal situations that will likely negatively impact their socio-economic status. In broader strokes, this precedent solidified an interpretation of LAMA based on historically narrow understandings of the relationships between pre-colonial traditions, customary law, the liberation war, and 25 years of independence. In examining these relationships, my discussion does not address AIDS; rather, I suggest that LAMA has emerged as a structural vulnerability for women. Examining the history of LAMA in the context of the liberation war serves as an example of how feminist practice uncovers political structural vulnerabilities that create barriers for women.

Robert Mugabe appeared to construct a liberation movement in which liberation for Zimbabwe meant a return to African traditions, a non-racist government, and the emancipation of women. The process of enacting LAMA was in part informed by women’s emancipation being tied to the goals of the liberation struggle. In 1979, Mugabe made such proclamations, restated in his book Our War of Liberation.

The question that remains unanswered revolves around defining African traditions. At the crux of the debate is, through an act such as LAMA, if Mugabe meant that women would return to their pre-colonial traditional roles, traditional roles as interpreted through customary law, or enjoy new freedoms. It is not possible to determine which of these options Mugabe intended with his proclamations, but it is possible to examine debates surrounding concepts such as traditions and customary law. These are concepts shaped by colonial encounters where analyses have revealed that colonial legal systems altered traditions and constructed frameworks for continued modifications of traditions and customary law after independence (Chanock 1985, Falk Moore 1986). In the case of Zimbabwe, both LAMA and the history of its enactment have been subject to continued post-colonial modifications, which in turn, potentially impacts women’s rights. Examining the “African Traditions Debate” as well as discussing relationships between the enactment of LAMA and the Zimbabwean liberation war direct AIDS analyses beyond discussions about who is impacted by AIDS and toward examinations that disentangle the historical entanglements that reside in the struggles women face.

On the eve of independence it was evident that the project of returning to African traditions was to be a site of debate. In 1979, as O’Meara (1982: 18) notes Mugabe proclaimed as much in an interview with the Zimbabwe Herald, “Independence will bestow on us a new personality, a new sovereignty, a new future and perspective and indeed, a new history and new past.” Mugabe’s emphasis on what will be “new” sets the tone for the parameters of a longstanding and continuing African traditions debate. The debate concerns “new” customary law and juxtaposes masculinist and liberation ideologies. Each side shares in the desire to return to pre-colonial African traditions; however, in efforts to define African traditions, each side maintains that the other side is making paradoxical claims.

The masculinist ideology seeks a return to a tradition of male dominance in the form of customary law. The paradox resides in the argument that customary law was a colonial invention and did not exist in the same forms in pre-colonial societies (Barnes 1995; Schmidt 1991, 1992). The liberation ideology seeks equity for women; yet is saddled with the burden of arguing that male dominance did not exist in pre-colonial African societies. Without this argument, the masculinist ideology claims that a goal of women’s equity is incongruent with African traditions.

Projects which open space for unpacking the African traditions debate, represent an integral element for feminist practice. As sub-Saharan African women continue to be impacted by AIDS, discussion of the African traditions debate allows for understandings of the complex relationships of colonialism, liberation movements, and political development post-colonially. Equally, the African traditions debate raises questions in terms of how differing opinions in defining traditions have impacted both the enactment and interpretations of LAMA.

Paradoxical Terrain

The Zimbabwean Legal Age Majority Act represents a historical entanglement as much as it makes evident a paradoxical terrain. This is a terrain that contains and is shaped by both local and more global dimensions. This is to say that women impacted by AIDS, in Zimbabwe for example, are caught in a set of paradoxical dilemmas surrounding selective and partially realized historical events and promises, while at the same time, the larger or more global discourse on AIDS limits understandings of the specific histories and subjectivities of women.

To further address the local and global paradoxical terrain, I first consider whether LAMA emerged from a socio-political alliance of women who sought their liberation. The goal here is better understand the ways in which the health and socio-economic impacts of AIDS and the systemic barriers impinging on women’s lives are exacerbated by ideological vision of national identities. Next, I examine the AIDS discourse and its role in perpetuating a first/third world division; a division which tends to render women—their histories and subjectivities—invisible.

Nationalist Movements

In part, LAMA was the result of incorporating women’s emancipation into the goals of the Zimbabwean liberation struggle; however, it would be shortsighted to claim this as a direct relationship. Lyons’ (2004) interviews with women who participated in the liberation war coupled with her archival research reveals the varying ways in which women’s emancipation did and did not emerge as an area of concern during the course of the war. For example:

Clearly, different female veterans had different views of what the goals of liberation were and what was part of the movement while the archives present information inconsistent with the views of veterans. There is a risk in the assumption that, by virtue of women’s involvement in the fight for freedom, this led to the enactment of LAMA as means toward gender equity. One way to understand the risks of this assumption is to consider the tensions between pressure to put LAMA in place and the agendas of Western feminism. Former female combatants viewed Western feminism as irrelevant to their fight and the comments of Ropa (in Lyons 2004: 56-57), critiquing Western feminism facilitate an understanding of the tensions.

Despite these tensions, women’s emancipation was, to a certain degree, integrated into the liberation struggle in varying ways during the mid to late 1970s (well into the fifteen-year armed struggle). Integration was in part a result of the intentions of those involved in the war; yet more profoundly this integration represents the privileged historical narrative in which women rose above traditionally subordinated gender positions (Lyons 2004). Zimbabwean women combatants emerged into the international spotlight as women who fought equally with men in the struggle for national independence. This time frame coincided with the 1975 United Nations Decade for Women and the 1980 mid-term Global Conference on Women in Copenhagen. As Ropa (in Lyons 2004: 45) notes, “The 1975 decade for women further strengthened our ideas of changing the laws.”

Given the timeframe of LAMA’s emergence, the new nation-state was under pressure to adopt a law for women. Analyses emerging at this time, such as Lapchick and Urdang (1982), concluded that equal fighting would equate to a future of gender equity. However, as Simbanegavi (2000) argues, women’s involvement in the war did not equate to a gender revolution to the extent that a new cadre of liberated women emerged.

Chiwome and Mguni (n.d.) argue that the links between women’s involvement in the war and the fight for their equity was strategically propagated to keep morale up during the armed struggle and to demonstrate that the fight had brought an end to women’s oppression.

In these images men, and particularly women, were propped-up as larger-than-life figures. Chiwome and Mguni (n.d.) notes the argument of Maraire (1996):

My interest in linking LAMA and women’s involvement in the war is to suggest that the act was largely a reverberation of the bifurcated political and judicial system created by colonization. Adjetey (1995: 1365) emphasizes the hybrid nature of African legal institutions.

Zimbabwean women fought for the adoption of LAMA and it is not my intention to belittle the importance this fight, nor is it my intention to imply that the adoption of LAMA was a mistake. However, LAMA was both a step in the right direction as well as an act problematically mirroring the types of regulations implanted by the economic, socio-cultural, and political structures of the colonizers. In the present day, Zimbabwean leaders have been able to selectively draw on history; they have constructed “new” customary law. LAMA serves as a means to invent and reinvent what is meant by African traditions and allows political leaders to ignore the ways in which customary law was a colonial invention. Understanding the history of LAMA opens space for feminist practice to expose the act as a structural vulnerability exacerbating the struggles women face.

The AIDS Discourse and its Invisible Subjects

AIDS represents a phenomenon where the varying dimensions of the disease and its impacts come to be analyzed and represented (or not) in the present as well as historically. As part of this process, analyses and representations in the present are informed by the socio-historical processes of the past. Analyses and representations persist in the present, but are put forth through the combination of written and visual descriptions of what is said to have happened in combination with the inclusion of increased knowledge in the present. Trouillot (1995: 29) describes this combination as two elements of historicity and argues that “the materiality of the socio-historical processes (historicity 1) sets the stage for future historical narratives (historicity 2).” These two interrelated moments of historicity loom large in understandings of AIDS.

AIDS conjures up notions of devastation; the material mass of the impacts are immense. Inclusive in the material mass are the individuals impacted, their complex struggles, and the burdens of the histories of AIDS. Engagement entraps us in ideologies and representations informed by the socio-historical processes of knowledge production. Knowledge can lead to successful interventions; yet, equally knowledge may increase stigmatization and marginalization, further fuel the spread of the disease, and intensify the impacts of the crisis.

Foucault (1972: 228) writes: “Discourse is really only an activity, of writing in the first case, of reading in the second, and exchange in third. This exchange, this writing, this reading never involve anything but signs.” Putting Foucault’s arguments in the context of AIDS helps to understand how analyses along with visual and written representations of AIDS involve signs that meld into discursive production. The discourse is not unique to this specific disease nor confined to the time period since first case of AIDS was officially recorded in 1981. AIDS is a disease that can be sexually transmitted; as such the discourse is informed by a broader discourse on disease, sex, and sexuality. Knowledge of disease, sex, and sexuality and the ways in which such knowledge is represented have complex histories, which constitute an important path of investigation for feminist practice. On the one hand, the object of analyses is the discourse as it exists today. On the other hand, one significant aspect in critically examining the discourse is unraveling the relationships between representations of past knowledge, their persistence in remaining prevalent, and their power to inform new concoctions of knowledge in the present.

In the context of AIDS, the lines between analyses and representations are thin. Analyses explore a complex health and socio-economic crisis and possibly suggest interventions strategies. Representations put forth ideas about individual and collective subjectivities often aimed at eliciting empathy while also raising questions concerning understandings of disease. The written and visual feed off of each and in combination they have the potential to create misrepresentations as well as additional complexities due to misrepresentations. The AIDS discourse fuels a frame of mind in which citizens become compelled to feel sympathetic, develop a sense of concern, and intervene as the savior for oppressed and powerless AIDS victims. My point is not to dispute the need for interventions; rather I argue that this frame of mind positions the AIDS discourse as embedded in problematic division between the first/third world. In this problematic division the struggles of women are, in part, in the hands of present day imperialists and right-wing political leaders who proffer a range of ideological agendas.

For example, in his discussion of the Western donor silence concerning the provision of anti-retroviral treatments, Jones (2004) argues that AIDS is at the epicenter of a rapidly (re)emerging ill-health curtain dividing the first/third world.

Additionally, it is instructive to draw on Mani’s (1998) analysis of sati in colonial India. By uncovering the intricacies of imperial domination and revealing the ways in which colonialism produced representations of the colonized, Mani’s (1998) examinations open space to examine AIDS by deploying similar analytical strategies: a critique of discourse in the context of colonialist relations. Through such strategies we can examine the ways in which AIDS is shaped by a discourse facilitating processes of rendering subjectivities invisible and securing imperial domination.

Mani argues that sati was shaped by colonial discourses in which women were marginal to the debate and not subjects in the discourses. The discourses worked to silence women, positioning them at one extreme—heroine or victim—while precluding the possibility of a more complex female subjectivity capable of reason and an understanding of the complexities of being widowed. Parallel to Mani’s analysis, in the AIDS discourse there may be ways in which the diverse subjectivities and struggles of those impacted by AIDS are rendered invisible. For example, people are not subjects of the AIDS discourse; instead, the subjects are the global pervasiveness of the crisis, the magnitude of suffering, and poverty, each often in the context of moral messages aimed at promoting abstinence as the central element for AIDS funding. With these conceptual subjects, the AIDS discourse potentially ignores the specific subjectivities, histories, and experiences of individuals. Instead political strategies along with neocolonialist understandings of AIDS circulate transforming and shaping discussions of the epidemics and how to contain them.

Jones’ (2004) comments and Mani’s (1998) analysis can be used to open questions concerning the ways in which the flow of geopolitics potentially impacts women in sub-Saharan Africa. These women face multi-layered struggles due to a complex disease and a socio-economic crisis. Women’s capacities to change conditions structuring their lives are often limited without access to resources and opportunities. As such, their futures, in part, revolve around the flow of geopolitics; specifically women are subject to how financial resources for AIDS interventions are distributed and to an extent, dependent on the actions of present day political leaders.

There is a wealth of information and media coverage surrounding AIDS as well as growing involvement in the fight. This generates a vast space for meanings to proliferate, oftentimes fueled by a wide range of agendas. Additionally, with sex as one mode of transmission, the morality element linked to disease resonates in visual and written representations of those living with AIDS. This was particularly prominent in the early years of AIDS epidemics. Treichler (1999: 65) describes the impacts in relation to understandings of AIDS in the third world.

In many respects, the underlying arguments concerning the AIDS discourse, such as Treichler’s above, have not changed since the beginning of the epidemics. For over twenty years researchers have argued against representations that AIDS is a disease of immorality and that conditions of poverty are inescapable. Instead researchers have emphasized that AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa represents struggles against neocolonialist understandings of disease and being construed as the third-world Other. For example, in a 1987 special issue of Radical America entitled “Facing AIDS,” the editorial board introduced the series of articles by arguing.

Expendability was, not only framed in relation to the moral order, but also in relation to location. In outlining the ways in which AIDS represents struggles against neocolonialism, Patton (1990) argues that the AIDS discourse has been enmeshed in representations construing Africa as a “homogeneous socio-political block” (1990: 77). In this argument, Patton (1990) highlights three Western-driven texts that emphasize the inabilities of Africans and inscribed difference onto the entire continent: inability to use condoms, inability to diagnosis HIV or AIDS, and inability to escape cycles of poverty. In exposing these Western texts, Patton (1990) argued that the inabilities were with the West and failure to recognize that AIDS involves a series of encounters interconnected to global inequalities and socio-economic and political forms of neocolonialism. As Patton (1990 :83) writes:

The arguments from Radical America as well as those of Patton (1990) exposes individuals impacted by AIDS as marginal subjects being construed as the third-world Other. They were largely arguments describing the context for those impacted by AIDS, yet equally they were arguments highlighting that the West dominates in the production of knowledge about Africa and about AIDS in Africa.

Conclusions: The Construction of AIDS and is AIDS Global?

It is important to return to Oyêwùmi’s (1997) arguments which disrupt the dominance of Western constructions of gender difference and challenge principles for the study of gender within certain feminisms. In doing this, it is useful to look at the central question she raises.

In the context of AIDS, I have argued that examining the who and what of social construction highlights the complex ways in which engagement with AIDS requires examinations of hegemonic systems and the reproduction of destructive divisions. It is a political engagement necessitating critical examination of the productions which shape the AIDS discourse, fuel the spread of the disease, and intensify the impacts of the crisis. Throughout this essay, I have argued that the effectiveness of feminist engagement with AIDS can be realized by giving equal weight to a range of theories and regionally and topically specific feminisms which also positioning itself in the context of what Grewal and Kaplan (1994: 4) term “the historical situation of postmodernity.”

Through a focus on the experiences of women and men impacted by AIDS, feminist practice provides a more nuanced consideration of the complex dimensions of AIDS. Specifically ensuring that the agency and subjectivities of women do not end up distorted, diminished, or lost in the political economy of AIDS or the larger AIDS discourse. In part this essay consists of a feminist call to action so that we can lodge a political fight to turn the tide of AIDS epidemics and improve the lives of those impacted. At the same time, it is a call to better understand the shortcomings of analyses of the past in our efforts to address the complexities of AIDS. What I argue for throughout this essay is dialogue or as Nnaemeka (2004: 382) writes (we need to) “walk like a chameleon—goal-oriented, cautious, accommodating, adaptable, and open to diverse views.”[8]

Even if we walk like a chameleon, theories, strategies, frameworks, approaches, practice, etc. often seem insufficient and not enough to fully address the complexity and severity of AIDS. One tendency is to expand the scope of our conceptualizations so that we consider AIDS in the global context, thus raising the question: Is AIDS Global?

On some levels, AIDS is a global crisis compounded by global inequalities. Yet, the risk in analyses of the “the global AIDS crisis” is overusing and under explaining the term global while sliding into a deployment of global that universalizes complexities and homogenizes subjectivities. Many scholars have effectively put forth arguments revealing the problems of a global feminism forth; however, still there is great risk given the realities of AIDS for scholars, policy makers, and practitioners to dangerously dip into a global focus. These actors will undoubtedly greatly benefit by paying heed to the lessons from feminist engagement with the global. Thus, I conclude this essay with two reminders and some further thoughts on whether or not AIDS is global.

The first reminder is that inherently “global” universalizes and as Grewal and Kaplan (1994: 17) argue, definitions for global feminism were problematic as well as damaging.

There are 17 million women and 11 million men living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa along with 12 million orphans (UNAIDS 2004b). Statistics aside, the second reminder is that these individuals face diverse, historically entangled, and paradoxical struggles in relation to both the disease which is impacting their lives and in relation to the AIDS discourse with posits representations that fuel destructive divisions and reproduce universializing binaries.

To embrace these two reminders means that analytical engagement with AIDS in the form of feminist practice, as I argue for, must pay careful attention to the physical and intellectual spaces in which engagements unfold or as Nnaemeka (2004: 378) writes:

In returning to my question: Is AIDS global? The first step in considering such a question serves as a way to examine the motivations of AIDS experts as well as the range of analytics explored through social scientific AIDS research. In turn, this question serves as a way to emphasize that AIDS represents a social phenomenon and that, as is the case with analyses of most social phenomenon, the goals involve enabling understandings beyond static accounts of the situation while also focusing on the embodiment of inequalities being represented. Analysts have projected that in the next twenty years 50 to 80 million individuals will die of AIDS-related causes in Africa (UNAIDS 2005). By drawing on statistical projections, AIDS experts aim to provide pathways for improved strategies to contain the spread and mitigate the impacts of the different epidemics. Therefore, one motivation for AIDS experts is the desire to avert the projections.

Certainly this is not the only motivation, particularly if we consider the broader range of analytics explored among AIDS experts along with my call for more dialogue with feminisms as part of AIDS analyses. Here I am suggesting that analyses of AIDS often take on projects grander in scope in correlation to the complexities of AIDS. Thus, through the purview of AIDS, analyses represent entry points into broader domains, such as economics, politics, science, and sex. In these broader domains, it is the why and the how of what political economy is intertwined with, the myriad of ideological conceptualizations influencing scientific research, and the problematic legacies of past knowledge claims concerning sex which constitute some of the more supple aspects of analytics. Through AIDS research the range of analytics unravel the multivalent forces that shape AIDS while also expose misconceptualizations in the context of inequities for those who are marginalized. This type of research takes hold to the extent that in many respects it is not only AIDS that is being analyzed.

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Notes

1. Throughout this essay I use “AIDS” to reference both those who are HIV+ and those who are living with AIDS. Additionally, I use “epidemics” to emphasize that HIV and/or AIDS represent a set of diverse and regionally specific epidemics. Use of epidemic in the singular form elides this point and pandemic implies global homogeneity. I use the term “sub-Saharan Africa” with trepidation. With such a term there is risk that the diverse struggles for those in the 44 nations UNAIDS defines as sub-Saharan Africa to become subsumed into the notion that they universally face the same struggles. This is not my intention.

2. Mutangadura (2001:1-2) outlines the parameters of her study as follows:

The sample of 215 households included 101 households from the urban site and 114 from the rural site. The sample of 215 households was purposively selected to include households fostering child orphans (aged 18 years and younger) whose mother had died below the age of 50 within the past five years. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain in depth information on the household-specific impacts of adult female death. A household in this paper is defined as a group of persons who are living with the orphans in the same dwelling and are dining together for at least three of the twelve months before the survey… The respondents of the survey interviews were the surviving children, husband, and the relatives who were now fostering the orphans such as grandmother, elder brother or sister, aunt or uncle of the orphans. (Mutangadura 2001:1-2)

5. Teurai Ropa and Joyce Mujuru are the same person (Lyons 2004:137).

During the struggle recruits were asked to take new names so that their families would not be persecuted by the Rhodesians if they were caught. Teurai Ropa, meaning “spill blood,” was the name taken by Joyce` Mujuru, who became the most publicized woman guerilla fighter when she was promoted to head the ZANU Department of Women’s Affairs in Mozambique in 1978. She married ZANLA commander, Rex Nhongo, during the war. After independence she became the youngest and first female minister in the first democratically elected government of Zimbabwe. When I interviewed her in 1996, she was Minister for Information, Posts, and Telecommunications. In 1998 she became the Minister for Water Development and Rural Resources. (Lyons 2004:137)

Joyce Mujuru currently serves as the Vice President of Zimbabwe.

7. As footnoted in Treichler (1999:65). See Farmer, et al. 1996; and also Shepard 1987; White 1990; Appleman and Kahn 1988, 1989; Gorna 1996; Bond et al. 1997; Erni 1998; and Abramson and Pinkerton 1993, 1995.

8. Nnaemeka’s (2004) use of chameleon was in reference to advice she received from her great-uncle when she left to begin graduate school in the United States. She highlighted his metaphor: “that she is not a chameleon, rather she is to walk like a chameleon”.

The chameleon is an interesting animal to watch. As it walks, it keeps its head straight but looks in different directions. It does not deviate from its goal and grows wiser through the knowledge gleaned from the different perspectives it absorbs along the way. If it sees prey, it does not jump on it immediately. First, it throws out its tongue. If nothing happens to its tongue, it moves ahead and grabs its prey. The chameleon is cautious. When the chameleon comes into a new environment, it takes the color of the environment without taking over. The chameleon adapts without imposing itself. (Nnaemeka 2004:382)

Citation Format:

Susan Pietrzyk. “AIDS and Feminisms,” JENDA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: Issue 7, 2005.