“…the ‘healthy’ self is sustained in part through the creation of ‘unhealthy’ others, who are imagined as embodying all the properties falling outside this health-signified self. Disease, especially contagious and sexually transmitted disease, is tainted with otherness and in our healthiest culture is seen in terms of otherness itself.”
“…if individuals are assessed at varying degrees of deviance from the norm, it is the norm itself that is thereby strengthened.” “The otherness of the sick or the high-risk individual is, in short, a boundary maintaining device that serves multiple agendas.”
(Robert Crawford. 1994. The Boundaries of the Self and the Unhealthy Other: Reflections on Health, Culture and AIDS. Social Science and Medicine 38(10): 1347-1365.)
In a recent ad campaign by Keep A Child Alive, celebrities of various backgrounds were photographed with an accessory and some paint on their faces and the declaration I Am African. The purpose of the campaign was to promote awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. While applauding the Keep A Child Alive message (that ARV are desperately needed in many Sub-Saharan African nations), it is interesting to juxtapose these two images of 'Africans'. On the one hand, the photo campaign presents a superficial attempt at subverting boundaries between "us" and "them" (White versus Black, American versus African and "Sick" versus "Healthy") by essentially reducing the difference to 'accessories'. However, on the other hand the photos act to reinforce difference and boundaries. The photos are all of celebrities that in western culture maintain a very privileged and high status position (the boundary between "us" and "them" is more than a bit of paint and jewelry). The 'I Am African, Too' photo speaks to this boundary and that the differences between the actress Gwyneth Paltrow and the African woman extend beyond more than accessories. Also, it speaks to the fact that this temporary appropriation of the "other" can only go one way. This black woman cannot be Gwyneth Paltrow and cannot assume to even temporarily appropriate her identity. The photo suggests that this crossing of the boundary from "them" to "us" is a "tainting of the norm". The actress embodies the "healthy self" and by temporarily appropriating an identity of the "unhealthy other" the photo works to strengthen the boundaries. (It is not "us" who are unhealthy but "them".)
