Making Sense Of HIV Infection: Discourse And Adaptation To Life With A Long-Term HIV Positive Diagnosis  

Oleh:

Crossley, Michele

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine vol. 3 no. 1 (Jan. 1999), page 95-119.
Topik: conversion; discourse; HIV positive diagnosis; loss; narrative; normalizing
Fulltext: 95H31.pdf (307.57KB)

Isi artikel

This article is based on research conducted with a group of HIV positive individuals who had been living with the diagnosis for an average of nine years. Traumatic events such as serious illness can have a devastating impact on a person’s life, especially with regard to basic ‘existential’ dimensions such as time, meaning and sense of control. This means that one of the primary challenges for the individual learning to live with such an illness consists in the development of a coherent narrative or story which enables them to make sense of their experiences and explain its meaning and significance both to themselves and others. This article documents this process of discursive reconstruction among ‘long-term’ HIV positive individuals. In particular, three predominant discourses are identified: 1. the ‘normalizing’ discourse; 2. the ‘conversion’/‘growth’ discourse; and 3. the discourse of ‘loss’. These discursive structures are illustrated in relation to three case studies. The analysis of these discourses demonstrates the ways in which they are appropriated by individuals to create a distinctive embodied adaptation to HIV infection which is consistent with their life circumstances. In addition, it is suggested that these discourses represent different cultural manifestations of the contemporary ‘political’ fight against the medicalization and objectification of the illness experience.

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