Stigma-embedded Semiotics: Indexical Dilemmas of HIV across Local and Migrant Networks

Abstract

This chapter applies Peircean semiotics (sign, object, interpretant) and related tools (indexicality, metapragmatics) to rich ethnographic data on HIV disclosure across US local and migrant networks of gay and bisexual men. Interactional grammars of sexual encounters are examined where HIV can be transmitted via polysemic (mis)interpretation. For local sexual networks, silence (sign) about HIV non-disclosure can index “bareback” condomless contexts (object) of ingroup belonging and empowerment (interpretant). For recent migrant men, however, silence during condomless sex may index differently—that sex partners can be trusted to disclose if HIV positive. Thus, silence by some HIV-positive men as empowering response to HIV stigma and rejection may paradoxically create sexual contexts of HIV transmission that recent Latino gay men then encounter. These semiotic pathways act as performative expressions on the ground of larger scale stigma rooted in unequal sexual orders. From a pragmatist framework of social mechanisms, the chapter’s goal is to show how emergent properties of complex systems (structural stigma, HIV disparities) affecting vulnerable populations are partly realized via semiotic mechanisms at the micro-level of sexual interactions.