Abstract:
Since the advent of HIV/AIDS more than
four decades ago, the disease has continued to be
constructed as "imminent death". This has made the
experience of being diagnosed with the disease a traumatic
life event in one's life project. Although overtime the
disease has come to be conceptualized as a chronic illness
through treatment using antiretroviral therapy, the reality
of eventual mortality in the face of chronicity makes those
infected to represent lived bodies suffering existential
disruption. Using illness narratives from 20 respondents
living with HIV/AIDS, selected using snowball sampling
techniques, this paper shows the ambiguity of social
construction of HIV/AIDS as a manageable chronic illness,
and at the same time as an imminent death in everyday life.
This ambiguity is evidenced by the strategies that people
living with HIV/AIDS use in resisting the perception of
their condition as a death sentence and at the same time
trying to (re)negotiate their threatened identity due to
stigma within the larger community they live in. This paper
then argues that stigma still remains a major social problem
among those living with HIV/AIDS despite the
advancement in HIV/AIDS treatment. This is evidenced
from illness narratives, which emphasize on personal
transformation, social support and the search for normality
as key strategies of dealing with limitations imposed by the
HIV/AIDS illness in attaining culturally recognized
markers of personhood in an individual life project
