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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | 'We Are Made Quiet by This Annihilation': Historicizing Concepts of Bodily Pollution and Dangerous Sexuality in South Africa |
Author: | Carton, Benedict |
Year: | 2006 |
Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
Volume: | 39 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 85-106 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | sexuality Zulu values AIDS animal diseases History and Exploration Health and Nutrition Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/40033997 |
Abstract: | This article links recent studies of sexual and etiological socialization underlying 'humanity's deadliest cataclysm' (AIDS) with scholarly investigations of how animal plague in the late 19th century affected people's cosmological outlook in South Africa. It begins with topical debates informing historians' perceptions of the unfolding pandemic. The narrative then shifts to an examination of fears of contaminating sexuality during rinderpest and AIDS in Zulu-speaking African communities. These two episodes of crisis mortality - triggered by the unexpected loss of multitudes - spawned recrimination against perceived guilty parties. Such scapegoating not only reflected prevailing gender and racial power dynamics, but also determined ambivalent attitudes toward biomedical intervention. While some Africans rejected modern curative treatment as another instrument of white malevolence, others welcomed Western help, which sometimes integrated elements of traditional healing and scientific principle. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |