Being Left Behind

Abstract

The problematic naturalisations and denaturalisations achieved by medicalisation, normalisation and marketisation appear in acute form around HIV, but they are not particular to it. This chapter argues that the HIV citizen’s formation by the naturalising processes of the pandemic is also disrupted by factors highly specific to HIV, and that these specificities are difficult but important to address. In my UK and South African research, these factors created the strongest discontinuities in people’s HIV narratives, positioning the narratives on the edge of HIV citizenship, and the narrators as HIV citizens under erasure, on the borders.

‘Left Behind’ was the middle movement of Hidden Legacies, a seven movement set for four synthesizers, bass, drums, soloists, and men’s chorus … a haunting lyric about the desolation of loneliness — being left behind, and the guilt that that often holds — [is juxtaposed] with the bouncy life-goes-on country 2-step in the music. During the first part of the song, couples peel away from the chorus, two by two and begin 2-stepping around the stage. By the time the instrumental arrives, all collected dancers participate in a flashy line dance. When the singers comes back in, one by one, the dance partners ‘leave’ their partners, leaving them alone, dancing alone, until at the very end, only one man is left dancing alone.

(Roger Bourland 2006)