In “A Positive Positive? Intersectional Analysis of Identification and Counter-identification in three Contemporary HIV Narratives,” Desireé Ljungcrantz focuses on the documentary The Longest Journey Is the Journey Within (2015), about Steve Sjöquist, an HIV-positive activist, and the autobiographies Ophelias resa (“Ophelia’s Journey,” Larsson and Haanyama Ørum, 2007) and Mitt positiva liv (“My Positive Life,” Lundstedt and Blankens, 2012). Using the analytical concepts of identifications and counter-identifications, the chapter explores how normativities and deviations are negotiated through portraits of distance and closeness, identificatory narratives, and counter-identifications – relating to a wellness discourse of happiness and positivity normalizing HIV. The analysis of the representations of HIV and people with HIV in three contemporary HIV narratives shows how normative lines are being drawn with the potential to both widen the cultural imaginaries of HIV and reproduce and draw more narrow ideas of who are living with HIV.

Abstract: Att skriva hiv – känslo-förkroppsligande hiv-blivande

Hiv kan vara ett slags trauma som skapar affekt, känslor och kroppsliga reaktioner, särskilt med tanke på olika fördomar som kretsar kring sjukdomen. Negativa föreställningar landar på vissa kroppar mer än andra. Genom att läsa två samtida svenska (själv)biografier som handlar om att leva med hiv; Ophelias resa (2006) och Mitt positiva liv (2013); tillsammans med Sara Ahmeds begrepp negerad fenomenologi utforskar jag hur känslor och kroppslighet skildras. Vidare fokuserar jag hur läsaren och texten samskapas i sitt blivande. Denna presentation är en läsning där flera jag möts. Det här är en känslo-förkroppsligande läsakt.

In-te(a)r-vein – a Companion Concept

In the personal-political-work in progress of my PhD project focusing HIV, relations and disclosure I am using the concept in-te(a)r-vein. Since HIV is a virus and a diagnosis connected to individual and collective experiences of (im)possible past-present-futures, that is also dependent upon non-human actors the concept must include multiple aspects of matter, identities and emotions as well as accountability and situated knowledge. In-te(a)-vein is my companion concept bringing in:

in: at a point within an area or space, forming the whole or the part of something/somebody; inter: between one to another, inter-agency and to bury a dead person; ter: three; tear: to damage something by pulling it apart or into pieces, to injure a muscle, move quickly, liquid from the eye; vein: tubes that carry the blood from all parts of the body towards the heart, a thin layer of mineral or metal contained in a rock or a particular style or manner; intervene: to become involved in a situation in order to improve or help it, to happen in a way that delays something or prevents it for happening; vain: vanity; in vain: without success; intravenous: of drugs or food going into a vein.

Through a reading of contemporary Swedish autobiographies on the theme "experiences of a life with hiv"; I will try to follow the emotions and the bodies represented in these text. How are meaning of hiv constructed when it comes to emo-bodiment?

This article explores the phenomenon HIV through queer readings. It explores the making of meaning, the nuances, dimensions and experiences in narratives on having HIV in contemporary Sweden. It centres around questions about the distinctiveness of HIV narratives and asks which narratives that are (made) possible, and which ones are (made) impossible? What types of relations are there between narratives and norms? What narratives of resistance are made visible? The found meaning making exposes a queer potential beyond health- and heteronormatives. Based on two different types of materials, 1) interviews of people with HIV and 2) autobiographies on living with HIV, the article traces negated experiences of living with HIV and finds both positive and negative ones. This is made visible by utilizing two types of queer methodologies and close readings of the texts: one phenomenological and one intersectional. Using a queer-phenomenological close reading of the material, the article traces negated experiences and disorientation through emotions of shame and melancholia. Using a queer-intersectional close reading of the material reveals experiences and emotions with more positive connotations, such as pride. The article finds queer potential in the gaps between the negative and positive emotions. In these gaps, and by using the concepts of queer time, heteronormativity and healthnormativity, the article traces and finds queer potential, expressed as a critique of the nuclear family. The queer potential of the narratives points to the ways companionships and intimacies other than the heteronormative can be built.

The article concludes that living with HIV in Sweden today is a complex position consisting of negotiations with negative imaginaries on HIV, heteronormative and healthnormative

This thesis is a transdisciplinary cultural study on the imaginaries and experiences of HIV as a chronic illness in Sweden between 2005 and 2014. HIV narratives are analyzed through a theoretical merging of a queer, vulnerable illness phenomenology and the construction of the feminist figurations: the HIV threshold, abrasion, bandages and sharp small stones. The material is in-depth interviews, auto-fiction, and popular culture representations. In in-depth interviews with people living with HIV and in auto-fictive texts, the thesis explores when and how HIV is becoming palpable in everyday life. An analysis of the ways in which HIV and protagonist with HIV are portrayed in popular culture is undertaken through the reading of HIV narratives: How could she?, Ophelia's journey, My Positive Life and Positive. It is analyzed how the dramaturgic curve and hero narratives are built and how normalization narratives of HIV in these stories risk the (re) construction of normative lines. Normative lines touch repeatedly upon respectability, the desire to be conceived as happy and successful, but also to live a liveable life. The HIV narratives unfolds trough emotions of fear, shame and mononormative melancholia that are like abrasions made from the relational becoming with HIV - generated in the encounter with other people, institutions and cultural imaginaries. These imaginaries, as sharp small stones, rub against ourselves and our bodies. Bandages, as individual strategies, of exposure and distance to the external gaze, are made of and co-constructed with emotions such as relief, pride and anger. Abrasiom offers and discusses performativities of HIV in the everyday life; how we are becoming HIV-positive together with not only other people and institutions, but also in interaction with societal dimensions of shame and control; and how emotions are co-constructing the phenomena of HIV. This thesis also builds on a poetic writing inspired by literary narratology: in particular, the poetic writing style is used in scenes with fictive characters, shaped against the background of interpretations of interviews, as well as in the auto fictive alter-ego narrator Desideria. This thesis closely portrays the relational becoming with HIV.

Assembling the different stories on hiv and aids we will together discuss how activism can transform health-disease narrative that would relocate the politics of virus.