ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and analyzes cultural representations of HIV/AIDS in Africa, mainly focusing on heterosexual experiences. It argues that the dominant biomedical approaches to HIV/AIDS have paid inadequate attention to grasping the socio-cultural representations of the disease, stymieing local, national, and global responses to preventing and controlling AIDS. Through concrete examples from Uganda, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, and Kenya, the chapter illustrates how cultural representations Africa can be deconstructed and reconstructed in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Hence most HIV/AIDS interventions have been anti-sex, anti-pleasure, and fear-inducing. While sexuality' involves pleasure, bio-medical approaches have rarely constructed sex as play, as adventure, as fun, as fantasy, as giving, as sharing. The social and cultural context in which HIV infection occurs is important to grasp. Devoid of such cultural considerations, HIV/AIDS programs can easily miss their mark as the chapter illustrates. HIV/AIDS interventions rarely take into account such contextually-bound cultural and social constructions of sexuality.
