Some Ponderings in Public Health

Problematizing PrEP

• medicalization
• reluctancy in perscribing 
• lack of knowledge? or, lack of critical thinking   

LGBTQ-friendly, affirming health care 

•     primary care
•     mental health 
•     trans health
•     case management 

Stigma-Shame-Self-Denial in the Covid Pandemic 

• Observations in cultural experiences of disease and illness narrative among those affected by COVID-19; 
• Opportunities in intersubjectivity and shared knowledge 
• Kuhn, and The Structures of Scientific Revolution
• Paradigmatic damming
• Incommensurability in the Tribal Mentality 

HIV decriminalization and the power of governmentality and the social fact: What do Durkheim and Focult consider in their analyses of structure, self, and society that is fundamental to how we understand knowledge systems, meanings and methods, and scientific theorization?

• Why is HIV treated differently compared to other illnesses, notwithstanding moral political historicity, but including real etiological differences and contextuality; as the prime font of cultural theorization in public health inquiry and interpretations of human sexuality, illness,  death and dying, and violence driving discourse and topicality in science and society. 
• Despite having shared similar stories about S-S-S in the context of the global AIDS pandemic, beginning with stories about South African Men and moving on to narratives of my observation and experience, there is a persistent power betwixt our identities and interpretive functions of communication which lends itself in support of the superstructure as the antithesis of apophenia in development of belief and doubt; be it a product of cultural deconstruction or cognitive dissonance, HIV/AIDS is a symbol in action whose holistic manifestations are visible in every aspect of human societies and experience as a apparatus of contagion and control. 
• My point is that there is something unique about HIV, as text, term, symbol, virus, disease, metaphor, or other interpretive function of communication used to describe our collective intersubjectivity with this object as social fact and the intimate interactions of illness among diverse peoples and perspectives, and the divergent ideas and ideals embodied in the organizational structures of knowledge, hierarchy, dominations and social control betwixt the systems of authority, alterity and imagination serving our history, agency, and evolution of cultural difference and contextuality; 
• HIV/AIDS is a product of human societies and globalization in development political pluralism, planetary capitalism, and penetration of the ecological wild; as both material contagion and cultural phenomenon, HIV/AIDS serves the etiological functions of interpreting illness as well as the structures of disease dialectics betwixt us and the enviornment. 

Apophenia (/æpoʊˈfiːniə/) is the tendency to mistakenly perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things.

Belief + Doubt (antonym?) 

Disciplinarity in Public Health 

Random Thoughts and Ideas That Will One Day Coalesce Around a Novel Theory for Culture, Health, and Sexuality • Sui Generis

Truth and Power

Identity, Interpretative Violence, Development, Governmentality, and The Commodity Form

 

It is upsetting to me for several reasons that those with whom I have shared intimate knowledge of my illness and experiences living with HIV continue to propagate ideas and ideals about this disease devoid of any discourse or discontents in development of etiological episteme, functional interpretations, or communications of intersubjectivity that are the prime font of this object sui generis ; despite a history of living with this disease, its devastation on the body, and human toll on the African continent, in queer communities and among the most vulnerable of our world, there is liminality in the imaginal spaces of our rituality joining meaning and materiality in a constant state of passage betwixt and between intention and reason, performance, and return that define thresholds of  collective consciousness which determine the pathways for navigating experiences, observations, and interpretations as individual social beings.     

Paradigms for the powerless 

Social Life of Things 

1.  Belief + Doubt : ¿two sides of the same imaginal coin?
2. Belief+Doubt” speaks to the social relations and networks of power that define daily life. At a time when the value of certitude is taken for granted, Kruger says she is “interested in introducing doubt.” Large swaths of the floor are covered in open-ended questions (“WHO IS BEYOND THE LAW? WHO IS FREE TO CHOOSE? WHO SPEAKS? WHO IS SILENT?”), while the area facing the bookstore explores desire and consumption (“YOU WANT IT. YOU BUY IT. YOU FORGET IT.”).

Imbricated in...

Liminality and the Rites of Passage (Victor Turner)

• intent and reason 
• performance 
• returning and resuming 

Turner, Victor. “Frame, Flow and Reflection.” Ritual and Drama as Public Liminality. 465-468. Print.

https://www.thoughtco.com/episteme-rhetoric-term-1690665

Foucault's Concept of Episteme

"[In Michel Foucault's The Order of Things] the archaeological method attempts to uncover a positive unconscious of knowledge. This term denotes a set of 'rules of formation' which are constitutive of the diverse and heterogeneous discourses of a given period and which elude the consciousness of the practitioners of these different discourses. This positive unconscious of knowledge is also captured in the term episteme. The episteme is the condition of possibility of discourse in a given period; it is an a priori set of rules of formation that allow discourses to function, that allow different objects and different themes to be spoken at one time but not at another."