title: Bearing the right to healthcare, autonomy and hope.
abstract: In this article, I discuss the significance of understanding within the context of the campaign for affordable and accessible HIV/AIDS treatments in South Africa, the transformational effects of the interplay between political rationality and affect for HIV-positive subjectivities. The article focuses on the policy tactics, in 2001, of the lobbying for a policy to prevent mother-to-child-transmission of HIV. A close reading of the lobby groups' rationalization of healthcare as a fundamental human right reveals a strategic attempt to recast a sense of helplessness into self-responsibilization, which concurrently involved nourishing hope in the preferred future for women with HIV to be afforded the right to individual choice associated with self-determination. Therefore, the struggle for a policy to prevent mother-to-child-transmission of HIV - an exemplary initiative to reconstitute HIV-positive subjectivity - maneuvered within both rationalizing and emotive spaces. Ongoing engagement of the broader campaign's contribution to redefining being HIV-positive thus also necessitates accounting for the effects of the convergence of political rationality and emotion in its tactically emancipatory project.
authors.affiliation: University of the Witwatersrand, Human and Community Development, Psychology, Private Bag 3, Wits, 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa. Electronic address: nkululeko.nkomo@wits.ac.za.
authors.forename: Nkululeko
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nkomo
mesh_terms: D000163:Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome / Q000517:prevention & control; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000628:therapy*; D017048:Health Care Costs / Q000266:history; D006291:Health Policy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D049673:History, 20th Century; D065026:Hope; D006801:Humans; D018445:Infectious Disease Transmission, Vertical / Q000517:prevention & control; D008119:Lobbying; D011247:Pregnancy; D013019:South Africa
keywords: Affect; HIV-Positive subjectivity; HIV/AIDS treatments; Mother-to-Child-Transmission; Political rationality; South Africa