Living Positively: Narrative Strategies of Women Living with HIV in Cape Town, South Africa.

Therapeutic interventions to address HIV in Africa mean that individuals are increasingly diagnosed with HIV prior to severe health crisis. This paper contributes to the anthropological literature on living with HIV by focusing on the creation and use of narrative and practical strategies for addressing HIV in a setting where such experiences have to date received little attention. Specifically, focus is on the discursive strategy of 'living positively', a forceful and much propagated orientation to life following an HIV diagnosis. In this paper the authors examine how this strategy is embraced not only by individuals living with HIV, but also by activists, HIV support organizations and public health agencies. The paper is based on fieldwork in and around Cape Town, South Africa in 2002 and draws on open-ended interviews with 12 women living with HIV and observations from support groups, activist events and public health meetings. The research indicates that the living positively dictum is imbued with a multiplicity of meanings and that it is used in diverse ways. For women living with HIV the practical and philosophical elements of positive living have social and political force in transforming personal and social attitudes about HIV, especially about HIV testing and treatment access. At the same time, however, the dictum poorly addresses the structural constraints of living with HIV and places the responsibility for positive living squarely on the individual. Despite this, the political context that prevailed in Cape Town at the time of the research created a particularly fertile juncture for embracing the living positively philosophy.