School of Culture and Communication - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/11343/396

Filters

2017 1
1
Reset filters

Settings
Statistics
Citations
Start date: 2012 × Type: PhD thesis × Subject: biopolitics × Subject: globalisation ×

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Retro/viral: temporality, territory and biopolitics in post-AIDS cinema
    Pocius, Joshua ( 2017)
    The widespread implementation of highly-active antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV/AIDS in the late 1990s instigated a rapid shift in the lived experience of the condition. AIDS was no longer a ‘death sentence’ for many, yet two decades later it remains a ‘life sentence’ for some. This shift promulgated a temporal disjuncture in the screen mediation of HIV/AIDS. This thesis addresses the fictionalised portrayal of HIV/AIDS in the ‘post-crisis’ era – that is, the era following the ‘end’ of the ‘AIDS crisis’ – and argues that the ‘AIDS epidemic’ paradigm has transitioned to an ‘HIV endemic’ paradigm. Borrowing from the terms of epidemiology, the conceptualisation of the AIDS crisis era as ‘epidemic’ infers that the cultural mediation of the virus, in addition to the virus itself, are imagined as exponentially increasing across population groups. In contrast, the conceptualisation of the ‘post-crisis’ era as ‘endemic’ infers that the prevalence of the virus, in addition to its cultural mediation, is understood as ‘stable’ and ‘normal’ for a particular place or population. This thesis posits that the shift from epidemic to endemic logics is manifest in screen fiction along threads of temporality, territory, and biopolitics. Examining contemporary HIV/AIDS screen fiction in three diverse sites – namely, the AIDS nostalgia film, entertainment-education media, and bareback pornography – this thesis presents a crucial, critical analysis of the mediation of the virus and the disease in this disjunctured moment. It illustrates the ways in which narratives and metaphors of the virus permeate cultural production, and accounts for the contemporary conflicted meanings of HIV/AIDS in the US, Canadian, Chinese, Kenyan, Nigerian and South African contexts. Through critical interventions which transgress both geopolitical and generic boundaries, this thesis argues that the temporal, spatial and biopolitical manifestations of HIV/AIDS in contemporary screen fiction reveal a conceptual dislocation between broad cultural understandings of the condition and the lived experience of the condition in the ‘post-crisis’ era.