How Rhetorical Practices Work

The aim of this book is to examine the relationship between the rhetoric of risk and medical knowledge pertaining to the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. The idea of “AIDS risk” rests on the assumption that there is a necessary relationship between retroviral entities entering the human body and affecting its immune system (a natural process), on the one hand, and certain social characteristics, on the other hand. Here, the term “characteristics” covers a wide range of features: belonging to a social or ethnic group, pursuing a specific “lifestyle,” being male or female, performing certain sexual acts, performing very many sexual acts, and inhabiting certain areas. In other words, performing a certain sexual act (or too many), embracing a certain “lifestyle,” and belonging to a certain ethnic group are risks because they necessarily trigger a biological process with negative outcomes. Necessity, as well as “facts,” can take many forms here: they both can be conceived as collective or individual and as behavior- or group-related. It is because of this necessity that “AIDS risk” exists in the world.

This logic obliges us first to learn more about how retroviruses (or indeed any agents or entities) enter the body and affect the human immune system, to be able to see which kinds of social “facts” constitute risk. Knowledge about rare opportunistic infections and about a new immunodeficiency syndrome underlying them allows one to develop knowledge about the etiologic agent, how this enters the body, and consequently, which acts or facts of social life lead to this process.