HIV Interventions

“A very complex and important book that bridges popular intellectual/cultural studies of HIV and feminist science/social studies in medicine. Both audiences will learn a great deal from this book, which calls for a rethinking of how technologies, especially treatments, have reframed the body in general, and of those who have HIV in particular.” Cindy Patton, Simon Fraser University “This book is effectively the first in ten years to engage critically with HIV science and technology, and hence is long overdue.” -Catherine Waldby, author of Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism “In this remarkable and timely work, Marsha Rosengarten makes the compelling argument that to approach the issue of HIV intervention as if information and flesh are distinct - as if the task of intervention is simply to convince fleshy bodies to behave according to the information - constrains our ability to think the processes and relationships at stake. Writing with admirable concision and clarity, she transfigures a theoretical terrain too long encumbered by such restrictive understandings in order to provide an alternative, nuanced perspective on how the HIV assemblage - the virus, the diagnostic apparatuses, antiretroviral treatments, pharmaceutical trials and interests, human embodiment and wider responses to HIV - consists of a myriad of processes that quite literally inform matter. Well beyond debates on ‘performativity v matter’ and ‘technological v organic’, this erudite work contains the best arguments I know for the political importance of thinking through the implications of such ‘informed matter’.” -Vikki Bell, Professor of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Marsha Rosengarten is a senior lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London.