Abstract
After Kate’s death I confronted people with the missing letters, the money that had disappeared and the web of secrets and lies into which we had all been woven. Free ART was on its way. But even if it had arrived in time it would not have provided the answers to the many questions of responsibility raised by Kate’s story. In this chapter I return to the questions of why Kate wrote her many long letters to me, why some of them disappeared on the way and why she was dumped in front of her sister’s house when she was dying. In other words: How do secrets shift their content over time and who is responsible for whom?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Dolan, Chris. Social Torture: The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986–2006. New York: Berghanh Books, 2009.
Finnström, Sverker. Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.
High, Holly. “Melancholia and Anthropology.” American Ethnologist 38, no. 2 (2011): 217–233.
Kulick, Don. “Theory in Furs: Masochist Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 47, no. 6 (2006): 933–952.
Meinert, Lotte, Hanne O. Mogensen, and Jenipher Twebaze. “Tests for Life Chances: CD4 Miracles and Obstacles in Uganda.” Anthropology and Medicine 16, no. 2 (2009): 195–209.
Meinert, Lotte, Michael Whyte, Susan R. Whyte, and Betty Kyaddondo. “Faces of Globalization: AIDS and ARV Medicine in Uganda.” Folk 45 (2004): 105–123.
Mogensen, Hanne O. “Surviving AIDS? The Uncertainty of Antiretroviral Treatment.” In Dealing with Uncertainty in Contemporary African Lives, edited by Liv Haram and C. Bawa Yamba, 179–193. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2009.
Mogensen, Hanne O. “New Hopes and New Dilemmas: Disclosure and Recognition in the Time of Antiretroviral Treatment.” In Morality, Hope and Grief: Anthropologies of AIDS in Africa, edited by Hansjörg Dilger and Ute Luig, 61–79. New York. Berghahn, 2010.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 36, no. 3 (1995): 409–420.
Simmel, Georg. “The Secret and the Secret Society.” In The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited by K. H. Wolff, 307–376. Glencoe: The Free Press, 1950.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mogensen, H.O. (2020). Whose Responsibility: And What Happened to the Letters?. In: Secrecy and Responsibility in the Era of an Epidemic. Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47523-9_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47523-9_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-47522-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-47523-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)