The undetectability of the HIV virus: a critical discourse analysis of a Brazilian federal government campaign

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the discourse of a campaign about HIV — entitled Undetectable Campaign —, produced by the Ministry of Health (MH), and the discourses of the participants in this campaign — who live with HIV and recently discovered the diagnosis. The study is carried out following a qualitative research methodology and the data are discussed in light of the theoretical-methodological approach of Critical Discourse Analysis and the concept of biopolitics. In general, the analyzes show that both the campaign producers and the participants who live with HIV focus on the undetectability (and non-transmissibility) of the virus to deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Despite the psychosocial challenges encountered, there are regularities in the biological and neoliberal discourses, which indicate that these challenges can/should be resolved with adherence to medication treatment and at the individual and private level (with support from family, friends, etc.), making, in this way, people who live with HIV biopolitically governed. In this sense, those people who do not fit into the social, political, cultural, behavioral and psychological standards of biopolitics, demanded by symbolic elites, are seen as abnormal and synonymous with pathological and monstrous in our societies, when they are left to die, whether from symbolic or material form.