LICENTIA COGITATIONIS

Surveilling the Unseen Body Biopolitics, Capital, and The Surveillance System I'm taking a detour to describe the way I see all of this.       Molecular HIV Surveillance (MHS) and Cluster Detection and Response (CDR) are not simply tools of public health, but systems of disciplinary control,entangled in state power, capitalist interest, and ideological domination. From data collection to analysis, reporting and visualization, the entire system functions not neutrally, but as a technology of governance targeting those already socially marked: queer folks, Black and Brown bodies, trans people, sex workers, the HIV+ and HIV-risk labeled-people, for having lives that deviate from the normative scripts of capitalist biopolitics.      Biopolitics is term used to describe how modern states exercise power not just over individuals, (a sovereign power) but over populations, by managing life itself, health, reproduction, risk, death. In this way populations beco...

Beyond Identity Epidemiologists and biostaticians need to think about they produce  knowledge, not just how they describe it. If we stripped away traditional identity categories like race, gender, and age, epidemiology and biostatistics would look profoundly different. And, I think that's a good thing. It is time for us to look at shared experiences, (or exposures), as inclusion criterion and the define our populations, stratifications and categories, in ways that acknowledge real cultural differences and contextuality; not just what the government puts on your driver's license. The imposition of taxonomies predisposed identities, without consideration for the subjectivities of the individuals for whom the categories is set to represent. These representational strategies are then used to make generalizing statements, or snap shots, about people whose experiences are not embedded in the research.  I'll give an example, then talk about the age-old Structure/Agency debate, and...

This is for the youth, who deserve the truth.  Local Problem:  Tennessee doesn't require medically-accurate sex education in public schools.  National Problem: The sex education curriculums in the US tend to focus on singular issues of reproduction or pleasure, without interpolating the sites of control that sex is.  Sexuality Education needs to adopt the pedagogy of sexual liberation.    We need a curriculum that integrates prevention with power, centering both structure and agency, choice and context, and demands that all bodies are afforded this education as an natural right. Sex Educators of the World UNITE! You have nothing to lose but your grants....  ✪ Primary Assumptions: Sexual health is inseparable from liberation struggles. Public health can be a tool of state violence. The goal is not only to protect bodies but to dismantle systems that control them. Resistance must be collective, creative, and unapologetically political. Core Principles: ...

  They can really see through me now? Introduction  In this post, I'll introduce you to Molecular HIV Surveillance (MHS) in the way that I learned about it. I had just began graduate school, in 2018- the same year MHS was rolled out as part of the CDC’s unprecedented investment in public health systems to “ End the Epidemic”. The introduction of new surveillance technologies required reorganizing at state and local health departments, so MHS and Cluster Detection and Response (CDR) infrastructure could be especially equipped to fulfill their functions. This was a funding requisite of the Ending the Epidemic package (or a Trojan Horse, depending on your perspective).  It was 2018, I was a Research Intern in the Division of Disease Prevention, working across departments on epidemiological projects, including sambas and CDR efforts; and I had special access to shadow the teams. I was also participating in policy analysis, and, of course, (forever a student of culture) a st...