| |
Back to Index
Engagements
& transformative knowledge: HIV/AIDS and the arts in Harare
Susan Pietrzyk
September 05, 2008
Download
this document
- Word
97 version (55.5KB)
- Adobe
PDF version (125KB)
If you do not have the free Acrobat reader
on your computer, download it from the Adobe website by clicking
here.
On September
5, 2008, in collaboration with Pamberi Trust, and at the Book Café,
I presented some preliminary findings from my PhD dissertation research.
As the title of the talk indicates, largely I study the paths and
forums through which HIV and AIDS come to be understood. First are
engagements, and by this I mean the various ways individuals and
organizations frame and enter into work around HIV/AIDS, with specific
interest in artistic, intellectual, and creative expressions. Second,
I study knowledge production and the ways in which ideas about HIV/AIDS
and its many interconnections come into play and circulate. Finally,
I look at how HIV/AIDS represents a mediating factor in broader
societal transformations. This is to say discussions about gender
and sexuality, for example, are as much about HIV and AIDS as are
any discussions which speak directly to HIV/AIDS. In fact, HIV/AIDS
is something that has performed transformative labor in that it
has opened up new spaces to speak more openly and honestly about
gender and sexuality. As a result transforming how gender and sexuality
are experienced.
As an anthropologist,
I focus on people—what they do, what they are engaged with,
how they produce knowledge, and how all of this happens within the
contexts of past and present day economic, political, and socio-cultural
circumstances. The people I study in Harare are those within spaces
I call intellectual and creative currents. That term encompasses
artists, scholars, activists and a wide range of words someone might
use to identify themselves. To put it simply, I've focused
on smart people and their use of words and performative engagements.
In doing so, my research is guided by the question: How do intellectual
and creative currents open up and reconfigure spaces of engagement
as well as redefine what counts as knowledge and who counts as an
expert? Through my two-year ethnographic investigation of the ways
intellectual and creative currents engage HIV/AIDS and produce knowledge,
I've studied processes of analyzing, mobilizing, and embodying
HIV/AIDS where the result is HIV/AIDS being made an object of symbolic
focus to perform transformative labor (particularly in relation
to trangressing state-sanctioned hierarchies around gender and sexuality).
Precisely because engagements position HIV and AIDS as a situation
intertwined with societal dynamics, knowledge production takes hold
discursively as well as through subjective experiences, corporeal
actions, and performative engagements.
In this talk,
I started from the base that Zimbabwean artists give us creative
expressions to enjoy and ponder, just as AIDS Service Organisations
(ASOs) provide assistance and information. From here, I sought to
address several questions: What happens and what might be the broader
meanings when artists play a role in how ASOs organize and implement
their programmes? How might this increase our understandings of
the ways HIV and AIDS are connected to a range of societal dynamics?
Do we need to expand our thoughts on who counts as an expert as
we consider not only, biomedical and economic realities, but also
the contributions of art and intellect in the fight against HIV
and AIDS?
What follows
is the text of the presentation I gave.
Background
and data collection
Like any researcher,
I went into my project with a hypothesis. This being belief that
engagements with HIV/AIDS contain great breadth and while work around
prevention, care, mitigation, treatment are essential, they're
not the only sites of knowledge production. In turn, my aim has
been to look at the possibility that the role of intellectual and
creative currents in HIV/AIDS-related knowledge production might
be under-recognized.
AIDS Service
Organisations or ASOs play a major role in knowledge production;
therefore, I've sought to learn more about this space. Specifically,
I conducted a survey in collaboration with the Zimbabwe
AIDS Network. To date, 54 ASOs completed the survey and its
questions concerning:
- staff, sources
of funding, focus areas
- thoughts
around terms such as multi-sectoral, gender, and sexuality
- the role
of the arts in HIV/AIDS programming
Aside from the
survey, my research has been qualitative. Or in using the anthropological
term, ethnographic. With either term, the approach has been being
present. I've attended events, meetings, workshops, festivals
that had to do with HIV, the arts, or both. I've interviewed
nearly 50 people. I've collected data which illuminates the
landscapes of intellectual and creative currents in Harare.
I'm grateful
for the generosity people have shown in speaking with me. The ways
in which various individuals have shared their thoughts supports
one of the overarching arguments of my research. That when looking
at intellectual and creative currents, I'm working with a
set of experts. You might even say I'm in a precarious situation.
I'm both learning from and studying a set of people; in large
part, studying what makes them part of a current of expertise.
Download
full document
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
