Contradicting Maternity. Carol Long

      HIV-positive motherhood in South Africa

      Carol Long

      Wits University Press

      1 Jan Smuts Avenue

      Johannesburg

      South Africa

       http://witspress.wits.ac.za

      Copyright © Carol Long, 2009

      First published 2009

      The publishers gratefully acknowledge financial support for this publication from the Faculty of the Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

      ISBN 978-1-86814-494-5 (Print)

      ISBN 978-1-86814-841-7 (Digital)

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express permission, in writing, of both the copyright holder and the publisher.

      Photographs on pages 8, 9, 11, 14-18 copyright © Gideon Mendel and on pages 12 and 13 copyright © James Nachtwey

      Cover artwork: Thula Mama by Karen Lilje

      Cover design and layout by Hybridesign

      Printed and bound by Creda Communications

      Contents

      Acknowledgements

      vi

      Preface by Juliet Mitchell

      vii

      1. Introduction

      1

      2. Facing the HIV-positive Mother

      23

      3. The Joys of Motherhood

      54

      4. Finding the HIV-positive Mother

      81

      5. Minding Baby’s Body

      105

      6. Mother’s Mind

      127

      7. Mother’s Body

      145

      8. Thula Mama

      168

      9. Contradicting Maternity

      190

      Appendix: Interview Content

      209

      Bibliography

      211

      Index

      229

      Acknowledgements

      I would like to thank the mothers who generously shared their experiences with me and whose stories are told in this book. Thanks to the hospital for their humane and dedicated service despite the odds. Special thanks to Juliet Mitchell, who took me under her wing and guided me through this project with brilliance and compassion. To my family, particularly my parents Linda and Nigel, and to my dear friends who supported me through this process, I could not have done it without you. And to Michael, of course …

      Sincere appreciation to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for financial support and provision of an intellectual environment. Within the Faculty, the School of Human and Community Development has provided an intellectual home.

      I would also like to thank the bodies who funded my PhD, upon which this book is based, including the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, the Skye Foundation, the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust and the Smuts Memorial Fund.

      Finally, thank you to the staff at Wits University Press, including Melanie Pequeux and Veronica Klipp, for making this book a beautifully presented reality.

      Preface

      One cold white day in Cambridge, England, Carol Long, an always shivering and very blonde young woman, told me she wanted to research the experience of being simultaneously given a death and life sentence. She proposed to interview women diagnosed pregnant and HIV positive at the very same moment; the test for pregnancy revealing the disease. Instantly my stomach contracted in identification with the unknown mother, but almost immediately, as Carol talked on and I questioned, I realised how very little I understood. My gratitude for the journey Carol took us on will always be immense.

      The modest presentation of a central part of this journey here in book form is extremely welcome; the book captures the work’s importance. The importance is, of course, practical – aspects of policy, of psychological and political understanding can be re-thought: for instance, I was struck by the importance of community. The mothers talked to Carol and to each other in their hospital groups and medical check-ups – a stigmatised disease lived in social isolation and the privacy of the home changes somewhat by being shared, its pariah status slightly eroded. But beyond the implications for how to change attitudes and therefore the conditions of both HIV and motherhood, what I want to convey is a larger, more general sense of why this book truly matters.

      It matters of course enormously to all the women for whom the mothers of this book speak. We, the readers, are almost certainly not these women; but, for all our sakes, we need to listen. If we do not, our ‘cultural anaesthesia’ will prevail: our knowledge of what Carol Long has heard as she asked and listened to the world’s catastrophes and its people’s trauma, will be without meaning. A meaningless knowledge diminishes us all. Instead of this Contradicting Maternity breaks through this anaesthesia, eroding the binaries of pain and pleasure, fear and joy, even death and life, us and them. It collapses our categories: the objects of research have become the subjects who address us with their big loves and small hates, with their lives and their impending deaths, their children’s heritage.

      Professor J C W Mitchell

      Cambridge University, UK

      1. Introduction