"An "onerous citizenship
Globalization, cultural flows and the HIV/Aids pandemic in Hari Kunzru'sTransmission
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2178428 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Richard Brock (0000-0003-2497-8030) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 379-390 |
| Publication date | 2008-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17449850802410499 |
| OpenAlex | W1980717290 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 4 |
The AIDS pandemic has become one of the defining fears of our globalized world. Numerous critics have demonstrated the indispensability of theories of globalization to conceptualizing the disease, but such is the metaphorical traffic between constructions of AIDS and globalization that it may now be equally impossible to conceptualize globalization without reference to the AIDS pandemic. In this paper, I discuss HIV/AIDS in the light of Arjun Appadurai's influential conception of disjunctive global “‐scapes” reflecting cultural, economic and ideological flows. Using this framework as a base for my discussion, I examine Hari Kunzru's novel Transmission as a partially displaced allegory of HIV/AIDS. The creation of a computer retrovirus by the novel's protagonist, I suggest, establishes a partly discontinuous allegorical relationship with HIV/AIDS, providing a lens through which global responses to the pandemic are invoked and satirized. I argue that the ironic reversals the novel performs in the disjunctive spaces between Appadurai's “‐scapes” allow it to expose and critique profound inequalities in global experiences of HIV/AIDS, and the ways in which the pandemic both shapes and is shaped by financescapes, technoscapes and ethnoscapes. In particular, I suggest that HIV‐positive status has come to represent a quasi‐ethnicity of its own in an increasingly postnational, transcultural world
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Disease · Ethnic group · Globalization · Ideology · Infectious disease (medical specialty · Pandemic · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Transmission (telecommunications · Anthropology · Global Security and Public Health · Medicine · Sex work and related issues · Gender Studies · Law
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,08 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2013 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |