Abstract
In Social Stigma and Sexual Epidemics: Dangerous Dynamics, Bronwen Lichtenstein begins with a discussion about what sparked her interest in the relationship between social stigma and sexual epidemics. The author’s interest in the topic began with a course she taught at the University of Alabama on HIV/AIDS. During the discussion of HIV/AIDS rates within the southern African American population, she was both intrigued by how HIV/AIDS was understood in national and local discourses, which she argues both reinforces the geographical stigma of the U.S. South as backwards and deviant, as well as racist perceptions of African American sexuality. Lichtenstein began to think through the way in which discourses concerning epidemics, particularly sexual epidemics, reinforced Western discourses concerning race, gender, sexuality, class, and immigration status. As such, in this text, the author thinks through the intersections of race, gender, and class in sexual epidemics in order to develop a theory of “colonizing stigma.”
In Chapter Three, the author explains that, “In borrowing from the biological definition, the act of colonizing is defined here as the ability to multiply (i.e., to impose one’s ideas, laws, and practices) with sufficient force as to overwhelm or subjugate the host. This theory relates to the continuity of stigma in the sexual epidemics in master constructs that are memorialized as tradition or culture or institutionalized as praxis and action. In brief, this perspective introduces the reader to the notion that the cultural transmission of ideas or practices is the most powerful predictor of stigma” (p. 41). Using the work of C. Wright Mills and Erving Goffman as her primary theoretical framework, the author develops a theory of colonizing stigma “both as an historical construct and as a structural phenomenon involving intersections of race, gender, and class in the sexual epidemics” (p. 6). The book states its aim at accomplishing this through two analyses. The first is a focus on how “colonizing stigma” is used to define the other as different, criminal, and lethal. The second analysis centers on how nineteenth century colonial policies aimed at controlling the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), created race-gender and institutional practices that discriminated against the colonized.
Chapter Two uses Goffman’s theory of stigma, with a particular focus on discredited identities, as a means of discussing stigma theory and sexual epidemics. Chapter Three develops the theory of colonizing stigma. Lichtenstein addresses colonizing stigma and HIV/AIDS stigma in postcolonial societies by first focusing on the colonization of New Zealand, and the role of STI stigma in the gendering of Maori women, and the role of STI stigma in the colonial process in Haiti. Part of this chapter focuses on how HIV/AIDS was understood by Haitians in colonial terms. The chapter ends with a discussion of how white guilt resulted in improved respect and on-the-ground aid work with local institutions in Haiti. The result was that Haitians began to stop resenting aid workers, as the aid workers started treating Haitians with dignity and respect. Additionally the discourse of the aid workers themselves changed, and lost its colonial tone. As a result, the author argues, there is a decrease in HIV/AIDS in Haiti as there was better collaboration between groups.
Chapter Four seeks to further develop the theory of colonized stigma, through a focus on African Americans. The chapter focuses on the infamous twentieth century Tuskegee experiment, where scientists lied to black patients about having treated their syphilis, in order to study the long-term effects of syphilis on humans. The chapter weaves through a history of “interracial sex on the plantation,” STI statistics, white southerners’ perceptions of Africans during enslavement, and the South’s various racialized perceptions of HIV/AIDS among health care workers, activists, and the general public. The goal of this chapter, as in other chapters, is to trace the historical route between previous STI colonial discourses, and recent STI discourses, including HIV/AIDS, in order to show the continuity of the colonial racializing discourses that depended on STI stigma. Chapter Five undertakes the same analysis in New Zealand through a focus on the Maori population. Chapter Six focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa, and Chapter Seven returns to the United States, with a focus on the U.S. South, in order to discuss how colonizing stigma is enacted through policies, laws, and social institutions in the United States.
Conceptually, such a project has tremendous implications in thinking through questions concerning sexual liberation, anti-racist politics and the politics of decolonization. Lichtenstein proposes a very interesting and important term that can be used to think about the relationship between the stigma of STIs and the legacies of colonialism—one legacy is how sexual epidemics are still used to define the racialized other. Such a concept is particularly of interest for scholarship that continues to trace the coloniality of contemporary western societies, and postcolonial societies. Chapter Five, with a focus on the experiences of Maori in New Zealand, and the relationship between missionary work and sexual stigma in Sub-Saharan Africa are particularly engaging, and are important contributions to work on sexuality and the colonial and postcolonial experiences of indigenous populations.
The text attempts to cover a lot of terrain, and could benefit from more consistent contextual analysis, as the history of colonization, the process of racialization, and the history of HIV/AIDS have profound regional and historical nuances. Additionally, the text would benefit from being in conversation with numerous theorists who are also working in this area. For example, in terms of theoretical framework, I was struck by the use of Goffman and Mills and no mention of Gayle Rubin’s Thinking Sex, for example. I wondered how the text would have benefited from engaging the theoretical frameworks of scholars in the areas of critical sexuality studies, such as feminist theory, particularly feminist postcolonial theory (Ann Stoler and Anne McClintock come to mind), queer studies and black queer studies, particularly work on gay shame, queer discourses concerning safer sex, feminist and queer discourses concerning sex positivity, and a consideration of scholars working in the area of the queer of color critique.
Admittedly, I was struck by a statement at the beginning of the book, which pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the book. Lichtenstein writes: “To my knowledge, no one has written articles, or books, or proposed a theory, that would transform the personal trouble of having a STI diagnosis into community action for social change” (p. 14). I immediately thought of Tim Dean’s Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking. In terms of postcolonial policy and sexuality, sexual stigma and the Caribbean, I also thought of M. Jaqui Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. Of course, there are many, many more people theorizing about STI stigma, postcolonial state policy, racialization, and sexuality. Nonetheless, I was left wondering how such an important concept as “colonizing stigma,” might have developed differently, if there had been engagement with the theoretical work of those stigmatized by the various axes of power discussed in the text.