ABSTRACT
The littered landscape now before us seems somehow both more manageable and more muddied. We have been introduced, in turn, to a physical object (the Jena Chair), a social phenomenon (the New York City Draft Riots), and a natural phenomenon (the Yí River Flood). With each new type of object or phenomenon, certain features-such as their multiple embedded ontological spheres-have been reinforced and extended to new types of objects or phenomena. Other features have diverged-such as autonomous determination versus self-determination. In each case, the ontological content comprising an object or phenomenon has proven to be self-positing, attesting to some form of freedom for a chair, a riot, and a fl ood. Will this again prove true in our consideration of a type of ailment, an embodied natural phenomenon? After all, an ailment would seem to di er notably from these previous cases. It combines certain features from our previous cases and adds the notion of embodiedness. In conformity with its unique nature, we have adopted an admittedly odd-to-the-ear neologism for our ailment of interest. Just as the Jena Chair is a unique type of chair, the Mozambican AIDS is a unique type of ailment. And it is unique in a double sense. On the one hand, AIDS itself is distinguishable from other types of ailments. This we refer to as AIDSin-general. On the other hand, any ailment (such as AIDS-in-general) must reside in a particular community. Therefore to distinguish it from AIDS-ingeneral and from manifestations of AIDS-in-general in other locations, we refer to our ailment of interest as the Mozambican AIDS-a particular manifestation of AIDS-in-general. Consequently, in a manner akin to our initial encounter with a chair, a riot, and a fl ood, consideration of the Mozambican AIDS begins not with AIDS-in-general or with the Mozambican AIDS but with the general notion of an ailment itself.
