ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how Khululeka members negotiate questions of masculinity and identity in a context of illness, ARV treatment, and extremely high rates of unemployment and livelihood insecurity. It argues that these articulations do not necessarily lead to the kinds of hyper-individualization and depoliticization that critics such as Ehrenreich assume in their challenges to what they perceive to be the 'neoliberalization' of health matters. AIDS activism in South Africa shares some common features with the US health activism of the women's health movement in the 1970s, AIDS activism in the 1980s, and the breast cancer movement of the 1990s. The chapter interested in Khululeka members' engagement with biomedical interventions-in the form of HIV testing, prevention campaigns, HIV care, ARV treatment and support groups-and, in particular, the ways that their encounters with biomedicine might be impacting on their conceptions of masculinity and sexuality.
