Subjectivity and subjunctivity: hoping for health in eastern Uganda

bibliographic database
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Book chapter

Title:	Subjectivity and subjunctivity: hoping for health in eastern Uganda
Author:	Whyte, Susan Reynolds
Book title:	Postcolonial subjectivities in Africa
Year:	2002
Pages:	171-190
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Uganda
Subjects:	attitudes AIDS
Abstract:	This chapter examines how people in Bunyole, eastern Uganda, are surviving the ravages of the AIDS epidemic. The author's approach turns on a concept of the subjunctive, that is, the tentative and the conditional mood. The concept of subjunctivity is a way of focusing on the intentions, hopes and doubts of people looking toward an immediate future whose contours are not certain. In eastern Uganda, in the people's own terms, it is a matter of 'ohugeraga', of trying out alternatives, such as one plan of action, then another. It is this subjunctive mood that prevails in subjection to the insufficiencies of health care systems in postcolonial African States. Related to the subjunctive is another concept, civility, by which the author means the virtue of attending to others, showing them respect, and recognizing 'their moral privilege to an account of how things are'. Civility is related to subjunctivity in that people are implicated with other subjects they do not fully know or control. The notions of subjunctivity and civility suggest that subjectivity is situated and directed, hopeful but aware of fallibility. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]