-----Original Message----- From: Greg Nowell <GN842 at CNSVAX.Albany.Edu>
>Greg: Actually sex=death was pretty common before
>antibiotics.
this is interesting to note greg, but it doesn't exactly speak to the same set of circumstances: ie., aids 'happened' at a time when the relation between sin and sex, guilt and sex, had been significantly reworked and in many cases refused.
this is why aids has been a boon for religion, and not simply in the obvious case of fundies who talk explicitly about punishment for sins.
"What entitles us today to justify AIDS as a test that has the power to convert us to divine faith? Does such a justification not already contain the possibility of viewing AIDS as a punishment from God? Doesn't declaring AIDS a test or trial or acknowledging it as such, suffice to ascribe to the epidemic the meaning of a punishment or an opportunity, that is, the meaning of a possible restitution of meaning? Does such a production of meaning not suffice to derive a certain benefit from the epidemic?" [At Odds With AIDS, A. Duttmann, 1996, Stanford]
Alexander Duttmann's questions would also go to the explosion of new ageisms, like 'love your disease', and the idea that the confrontation with death has to be an event that insists on meaning, personal or otherwise.
and, aren't the claims that aids was engineered in a CIA lab somewhere similarly an attempt to derive a certain benefit from the disease, to give it meaning, though in this case quite a different one.
angela