Established as an exceptional cause during the 1990s, AIDS is today less present in the public space, sometimes left to its specialists. By bringing together some current research on the epidemic, this file launched by La Vie des idées this month will show that AIDS remains a powerful indicator of contemporary medical, sexual and racial policies.
During the 1990s, the epidemic of HIV/AIDS has received attention proportionate to the fear aroused by this disease. This period is marked by the proliferation of discourses and initiatives: artistic productions, research, militant actions, prevention campaigns, fundraising, etc. This exceptional treatment is now a thing of the past. The arrival of triple therapies in 1996 helped to normalize the disease, today often presented as treatable and chronic, at least in Northern countries. The uses of antiretrovirals, as treatment and prevention, make it possible to treat patients, make them non-contaminating, or protect HIV-negative individuals. It is these elements which allow theUN to consider, since 2011 and in the long term, the “ end of AIDS “.
This story of the end of AIDS implies a linear and heroic conception of doctors progressing little by little in their fight against the disease, if international mobilization, and in particular financial means, are up to the task. However, it obscures the disparities in policies and experiences of the disease, the debates sparked by new prevention strategies and the reorganization of the fight against the epidemic. If the battle has lost its spectacular aspect, AIDS still constitutes a key to understanding contemporary developments in sexuality, the relationship between science and power, new forms of activism or the development of medical markets.
This file aims to analyze contemporary developments in the epidemic, to restore the tensions and debates, to better understand the power relationships which contribute to giving it its current form. Historically, AIDS was thought of as a total social fact, in that it involved society as a whole.
Gabriel Girard, AIDS: an associative world in crisis ?, seeks to understand what is happening, thirty years after the start of the epidemic: its analysis of the relationships between the different components of the associative movement and the State sheds light on the challenges of public action well beyond the case of AIDS. The text by Maud Gelly on screening practices and that of Caroline Izambert on the history of struggles for the right to health of foreigners highlight certain effects of these recompositions.
AIDS remains an experience whose conditions vary greatly from one space or population to another: Marie-Ange Schiltz underlines this with regard to gays, Fanny Chabrol also shows it with regard to the Western production of Africa as an ideal medical and political laboratory.
We know that the AIDS epidemic was an accelerator of studies on sexuality, the need for knowledge legitimizing this field of research. However, as Elise Marsicano and Julie Castro show, it is a certain conception of sexuality that is promoted here, rather epidemiological, inseparable from colonial and post-colonial history, and gender relations.
Guillaume Lachenal highlights the racial representations that hamper research into the origins of AIDS. Beyond sexual issues, economic issues are increasingly important in the shaping of the disease: the diffusion of antiretrovirals has created new markets, and therefore new areas of struggle for AIDS activism.
Finally, Gaëlle Krikorian identifies, on the activist side, the resources that make such trips possible. The story of the end of AIDS must therefore not mask the fronts that are opening and the new developments in research in the human sciences.