The global promise to “end AIDS”

In this chapter, we will scrutinize the paradox of authority inherent in the strategies committed to ending AIDS. Based on a critical and deconstructive reading, we argue that there is a potential double-duty paradox embedded in the global “promise” to end AIDS as it is articulated in all these documents. Moreover, we argue that the promise to end AIDS often ends up becoming an obligation laid at the feet of individuals rather than a form of collective responsibility to change broader structural drivers of the epidemic. Rather than exonerating everyone of their responsibility to end AIDS, the ambiguity of responsibility formed through the recourse of a global “we” might end up individualizing and biomedicalizing the promise to end AIDS. In our final analysis, we contend that the double-duty paradox ends up obligating individuals through neoliberal mechanisms predicated upon notions of rational choice, risk calculation, and market choice for HIV treatment and prevention.