Abstract
Despite batteries of interventions to change the dynamics of HIV in South African communities, increasing HIV prevalence suggests that much more needs to be done to stem the tides of infection. Issues of language and communication around HIV/AIDS in particular merit more attention. One aspect of the efficacy of HIV/AIDS discourses is the question of what extent they may serve to (inadvertently) reproduce sexual practices and mores inimical to HIV/AIDS prevention. This paper conducts a chronotopic and multimodal analysis of a popular South African campaign ‘Brothers for Life’ from this perspective. The campaign is an attempt to promote ‘new’ role models for South African men in order to get to grips with one of the most serious factors behind the spread of HIV/AIDS, namely male violence against women and children. The analysis suggests that past ideals of masculinity continue to find resonance in masculinities of the present, although framed, mediated and reindexicalized in late modern discourses of consumerism. Thus foundational assumptions on figurations of masculinity and male sexuality appear to remain largely consistent across generations.
Highlights
South Africa has one of the highest levels of HIV/AIDS infections in the world, with the virus affecting all segments and strata of society, old as well as young
Despite all the interventions put in place over the years in an attempt to change the dynamics of HIV in South African communities, infection rates are declining slowly, if at all
We ask what forms of alignment between readers and the representation of contemporary masculinities do we find in the Brothers For Life campaign; that is, how are readers or consumers positioned vis à vis culturally mediated models of sexuality, and how does this alignment contribute to present-day semiotizations of gender and sexuality? More generally, what are the larger socio-political ramifications of types of consumer alignment with the local and everyday circulation of these representations of masculinity?
Summary
South Africa has one of the highest levels of HIV/AIDS infections in the world, with the virus affecting all segments and strata of society, old as well as young. More recent statistics from 2010 show that the infection rate of HIV in the Western Cape has increased to 6.12%. Despite all the interventions put in place over the years in an attempt to change the dynamics of HIV in South African communities, infection rates are declining slowly, if at all. One issue that merits attention in this context is the language of HIV/AIDS discourses. Language plays a vital role in the construction of “local knowledge” about the social realities of HIV/AIDS in different cultural contexts (Clemente and Higgins 2010:63). This applies to multimodal representations of HIV/AIDS discourses (Mutonyi and Kendrick 2010), as meanings are constructed, distributed, received, interpreted and reconstructed in a variety of representational and communicative modes, and not just through verbal language alone (Kress and Jewitt 2003:1)
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