Paper short abstract:

This paper explores ignorance through the lens of the body, conceptualising skin as a permeable membrane between the knowable surface and the embodied uncertainty hidden beneath. It draws on body-maps to explore the analytical potential of visual metaphor and methodology for illuminating ignorance linked to HIV and biomedicine within the body.

Paper long abstract:

South African activists established a large-scale HIV treatment literacy program between 1998 and 2008 to promote the science of HIV and to dispel pseudo-scientific myths that HIV was not linked to AIDS and that antiretroviral (ARV) medicines were toxic. When ARVs were finally provided in the public health sector from 2004, a new set of challenges emerged as people struggled to negotiate the embodied uncertainty linked to ARV side-effects and viral resistance. Drawing on Haraway's conception of material-semiotics and Latour's actor-network theory, this paper articulates levels of 'knowing' and 'unknowing' as viruses and medicines enter and become animated as nonhuman actants within the human body. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between October 2010 and September 2011 in South Africa and engages with a series of body-maps developed by a group of HIV-positive activists to explore the disjuncture between conceptual knowledge and embodied uncertainty and ignorance. It explores discourses of 'knowing' generated through the science-based treatment literacy program and embodied uncertainty as the artists expressed dismay at the 'unknowability' of the virus as it surrendered to or resisted ARVs. The 'unknowability' of ARVs also surfaced as side-effects, like lipodystrophy, thus challenging scientific assertions of biomedical efficacy. The paper argues that ignorance emerges at the disjuncture of conceptual knowledge and embodied uncertainty. By visualising the hidden aspects of HIV and medicine, the body-maps bring to light a series of hidden interactions between human and nonhuman actants that are simultaneously embodied and, at times, conceptually indecipherable.