‘Is there an Eternal Return of HIV / AIDS-related Discrimination?’: Law Reform in the Karmic Machines of Time and Becoming

Abstract

The laws controlling HIV / AIDS in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have adopted very different policy orientations. The article argues that, while the differences in laws manufacture different impacts on the level of discrimination against PLHAs, they all, in one way or another, fixate themselves on the past imaginary in relation to HIV / AIDS, and ignore the emerging future (for example: advanced medical technology); they do this so as to avoid revising the current laws, thus sustaining or intensifying the existing discrimination. The article, via investigating the respective time machines devised by Nāgārjuna, Nietzsche and Deleuze, attempts to suggests that future, present and past all exist and inter-influence each other in a singular mental dimension. The article also scrutinizes the role of law and possible law reform in re-formatting the time machine and redefining disease control.