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The Widow in Blue: Blood and the Morality of Remembering in Botswana's Time of Aids

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Frederick Klaits
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Abstract

Popular talk and silence about AIDS in Botswana have been shaped by survivors' efforts to manage the ways in which they remember relationships arising from procreation. The emotional force of death induces the immediately bereaved and wider communities of survivors to recollect who has shared blood with whom through sexual intercourse. Such acts of remembering may have decisive repercussions on relations of kinship, marriage and mutual support. For Batswana, ‘remembering’ is a form of acting as well as feeling, possessing a capacity to shape moral conduct for the long term. In the context of death, local debates about what and how to remember reflect contested endeavours to make relations based on blood persist beyond a person's passing. Focusing on a particular set of local perspectives on the morality of remembering, the article shows that members of an Apostolic church in Gaborone encourage one another to remember in a manner reflecting distinctive methods of maintaining relations of kinship and care.

Résumé

La discussion et le silence populaires autour du SIDA au Botswana ont été façonnés par les tentatives des survivants de gérer la façon dont ils se souviennent des relations découlant de la procréation. La force émotionnelle de la mort pousse les récemment endeuillés et les communautés plus larges de survivants à se souvenir de ceux qui ont pu échanger du sang lors de relations sexuelles. Ces actes de souvenir peuvent avoir des répercussions décisives pour les relations de parenté, de mariage et de soutien mutuel. Pour les Batswana, l'«acte de se souvenir» est une forme d'interprétation et de sentiment, capable de façonner la conduite morale sur le long terme. Dans le contexte de la mort, les débats locaux sur l'objet et le mode du souvenir reflétent des tentatives contestées de faire persister des relations basées sur le sang au-delà du décès de la personne. Centré sur un ensemble spécifique de conceptions locales de la moralité du souvenir, l'article montre que les membres d'une église apostolique de Gaborone s'encouragent mutuellement à se souvenir d'une façon qui reflète des méthodes distinctives de maintien des relations de parenté et de soin.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 75 , Issue 1: Collective Memory, Reproduction and Generation in Africa , February 2005 , pp. 46 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2005

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