Understanding Aids Conspiracies: The Critical Value of Postmodernism

摘要

HIV has always been invested with meanings that have conveyed the fear and disapprobation surrounding the disease. The emergence of the epidemic heralded a concurrent 'epidemic of signification', eliciting responses fraught with misunderstanding, prejudice and panic (Treichler, 1999, p. 315). As the biomechanics of HIV, including its modes of transmission, were initially mysterious, the new disease exposed the fallibility of modern medicine. It also inspired sensationalist media representations and conspiratorial accounts about its origin and effects. The CIA, the FBI, the Soviet Union, pharmaceutical corporations, aliens, monkeys in brothels, the tour of King Tutankhamen's treasure to the United States, blood oranges and smallpox eradication campaigns-all of these have been implicated in conspiracy theories about the emergence of the HIV epidemic.