Paper short abstract:

This paper explores metaphors for AIDS and its potential use as a metonym for structural violence. Engaging the power of metaphoric and metonymic thinking in constructive ways may potentially mitigate stigma and facilitate a deeper, holistic understanding of the disease and its management.

Paper long abstract:

Beyond Sontag: Metaphors, Metonyms and the AIDS pandemic

In the 1980's Susan Sontag famously coined the phrase "Illness as Metaphor." In her exploration of metaphors within popular culture pertaining to cancer, TB and AIDS, she directly associated these metaphors with stigmatization of the chronically ill and argued firmly against metaphoric thinking, seeking a 'wholesome dedramatization' of AIDS so that a "specific dreaded illness (could) come to seem ordinary".

In 2015 HIV/AIDS has reached pandemic proportions. Whilst denigrating metaphors persist, many claim that diminishing HIV to 'just another' illness is as unhelpful as sensationalist rhetoric. As HIV positive gay scholar David Caron writes "to have HIV isn't a catastrophe but it isn't nothing either". This paper explores both potentially stigmatizing and empowering metaphors for AIDS and the reframing of AIDS as a metonym for structural violence. Engaging the power of metaphoric and metonymic thinking in constructive ways may potentially mitigate stigma and facilitate a deeper, holistic understanding of the disease and its management.