Beyond biomedicine: Sub-Saharan Africa and the struggle for HIV/AIDS discourse

This study aims to unearth monological and monocultural discourses buried under the power of the dominant biomedical model governing the HIV/AIDS debate. The study responds to an apparent consensus, rooted in Western biomedicine and its "standardizations of knowledge," in the production of the current HIV/AIDS discourse, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, biomedicine has become the dominant actor (in) writing and rewriting discourse for the masses while marginalizing other forms of medical knowledge. Specifically, in its development, the Western biomedical model has arguably isolated the disease from its human host and the social experiences that facilitate the disease's transmission, placing it in the realm of laboratories and scientific experts and giving full ownership to Western medical discourse. Coupled with Western assumptions about African culture that reproduce a one-sided discourse informing the social construction of HIV/AIDS in Africa, this Western monopoly thus constrained the extent and efficacy of international prevention efforts. In this context, the goal for this study is not to demonize the West and biomedicine in general. Rather, this study seeks an alternative and less monolithic understanding currently absent in scientific discourses of HIV/AIDS that frequently elevates Western biomedicine over indigenous medicine; the Western expert over the local. The study takes into account the local voices of Sub-Saharan Africa and how the system has affected them, this study utilizes a Foucauldian approach to analyze discourse as a way to explore how certain ways of knowledge are formed in relation to power. This study also examines how certain knowlege is maintaned and reinforced within specific discourses.