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The AIDS Crisis and the Modern Self

Biographical Self-Construction in the Awareness of Finitude

  • Book
  • © 2000

Overview

Part of the book series: International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine (LIME, volume 3)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

Keywords

About this book

In industrialized countries, HIV/AIDS is now increasingly perceived as a chronic condition. Yet initially, before combination therapy became available, this pandemic was widely associated with premature or even imminent death. Receiving the diagnosis typically led to a dramatic biographical disruption.
This highly original book turns this basic feature of life with HIV into the vantage point for a fascinating analysis of Western subjectivity. Combining a host of empirical observations with the debate on the modern self, the author argues that the self-construction of people with HIV highlights the precarious yet indispensable status of the self in contemporary Western society. Constructing one's biography in terms of self-actualization is in fact a manifestation of nihilism: it evokes a standard of certainty which, on closer examination, cannot be sustained.
Written in a lucid style, this unique book will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of sociology, social psychology, social anthropology, social theory and philosophy, as well as anybody interested in the relationship between the self and society or the experience of living with HIV/AIDS.

Authors and Affiliations

  • London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

    Sebastian Rinken

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The AIDS Crisis and the Modern Self

  • Book Subtitle: Biographical Self-Construction in the Awareness of Finitude

  • Authors: Sebastian Rinken

  • Series Title: International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9502-5

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2000

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-6371-2Published: 31 August 2000

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-5484-5Published: 06 December 2010

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-015-9502-5Published: 17 April 2013

  • Series ISSN: 1567-8008

  • Series E-ISSN: 2351-955X

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVI, 242

  • Topics: Ethics, Sociology, general, Philosophy, general

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