Murdoch University
The Krishna Somers Foundation presents a lecture on (Re-)Mediatizing HIV/AIDS in South Africa
The lecture will be given by
Professor Keyan Tomaselli.
Light refreshments will be served.
When: Wednesday November 4 2009 4.30 PM
Where: ECL3
Title: "(Re-)Mediatizing HIV/AIDS in South Africa"
Abstract
Written from a partly autoethnographic perspective, this paper investigates current and past South African government stances on HIV/AIDS, grounding them in their larger political and ideological contexts, and examining the broader repercussions. A comparative analysis of South Africa’s loveLife and STEPS interventions problematizes the self-branding used by loveLife in favour of the uplifting and humanizing message of STEPS. The author highlights the dangers of favoring AIDS solutions seeped in racial and cultural discourse over scientific ones, and calls for the country’s current HIV/AIDS strategy to be ‘(re)-mediatised’ in terms of its local and global representations. The idea of sham reasoning is discussed in relation to the generation of pseudo-scientific discourses.
Keyan G Tomaselli is Senior Professor, Culture, Communication and media Studies, and Director of the Proto Centre for Communication, Media and Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. He is author of many books on South African cinema and media, and edits Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural and Media Studies. He is co-editor of Journal of African Cinemas.
