The challenges of thinking across time

Writing a PhD can be paralysing; what are you trying to say that hasn't been said before and can these claims be sustained by the evidence?

What I’m trying to understand is how and why HIV has come to shape our thinking about rape, and what is the effect of this influence. It’s clear that that the way these relations has been thought is not constant. The 1990s were a time of very significant political change in South Africa. It seems to me (as others have noted) that the rape of children was a way to talk about the anxieties of the new nation, its birth, the people it was bringing forth. The emphasis on innocence and purity at this time is particularly intriguing, especially in the way it seems to echo ideas at the turn of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century when South Africa became a union, following the South African war.

Because Boer and English were seen as two different races an attempt was made to unify them on the basis of a shared whiteness (illustrating how very fluid ideas about race were at this point). This period also coincided with the rise of eugenics, and the social purity and social hygiene movements. All three (sometimes in different ways) seem to have been concerned with racial degeneracy and its prime example – the poor white. Venereal diseases and their congenital effects took on particular importance in this context, expressed through the focus on women’s fertility and morality.

This suggests that women’s bodies are ascribed particular meanings under conditions of racialised nationalism. Does this point apply to South Africa post-democracy? And did the arrival of HIV resurrect these older ideas of race, purity and nation forged in the context of a different sexually transmitted infection – venereal disease? This is what I’m grappling with.