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Abstract:
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In this project , I am interrogating discourse surrounding the 2008 WHO /UNAIDS controversy , which both preceded and followed the publication of an article in the U .K . newspaper The Independent . The article reported that the head of the World Health Organization’s HIV /AIDS initiative admitted that the threat of an AIDS pandemic among heterosexuals was “officially” over . These texts are particularly important for such an endeavor because , as I will argue below , the controversy enables both “AIDS” and “heterosexuality” to operate as floating signifiers whose meanings are contested in public discourse in ways that ultimately reinforce heterosexual privilege and under -attention to the AIDS crisis . In the end , the destabilization of the meaning of HIV /AIDS does not serve emancipatory ends . Although the destabilization of meaning is the emancipatory gesture ‘par excellence’ for the poststructuralist tradition , my investigation shows that the destabilization of meaning in the WHO controversy actually results in the reification of master narratives . |