Page 79 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

OF DESIRE, THE FARANG, AND TEXTUAL EXCURSIONS 73

specificity of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Asia depends on how the global
vectors of the transnational trafficking of capital, bodies, desires, pleasures, and
ideologies are translating and retranslating this very historical moment of crisis
in the Asian region.

III
‘Asian AIDS’ emerged in mid—to late 1980s. In the same period, global
development has deeply transformed the East and South Asian region into new
economic centres modelled after Euro-American economies. The historical
parallel makes the celebration of ‘Asian capitalism’ a highly ambiguous, and
deeply anxious, event. In his bestselling book, Julian Weiss writes,

The Asian Century has arrived. It is an unexpected shooting star in the
night sky of world events from which great possibilities emerge. The
‘Asian Century’ concept embodies far more than economics. It is the kernel
of new geopolitics, a basic realignment in an information age and
postindustrial era. The shape of the next century is being cast in the
Pacific.
(1989:vi)

Precisely in the context of postindustrial global capitalism, what exactly is ‘more
than economics’ in Asian development today and what is cast upon the Pacific
are complicated by the presence of a raging pandemic. Terms in global capitalism
like ‘divergent investment’, ‘free trade’, and ‘bilateral collaboration’ now carry
ironic connotations in the narratives of economic development on the one hand
and AIDS on the other. The triumph of global stories like that provided by Weiss
lies in the complete disavowal of any connection between these two narratives.

In the global AIDS narrative, the Third World is seen simultaneously as
the culprit or the origin of the modern plague as well as its victim. To the
First World—and the First World always seems to be the vantage point
from which we speak—‘they’ gave us AIDS, ‘their’ AIDS is now killing
their own people, and ‘they’ try to deny both. In the international AIDS
story, this triangular indictment—this triple assault—shapes the meaning
of the name ‘AIDS in the Third World’.

In November 1992, the New York Times published its first in-depth report on
AIDS in Asia. The headline, ‘AFTER YEARS OF DENIAL, ASIA FACES
SCOURGE OF AIDS’, immediately cues the reader to a familiar narrative
elsewhere: the narrative of AIDS in Africa and government denial. In fact, the
article opens its report about Asian AIDS by way of a comparison with African
AIDS. The journalistic coverage of Third World AIDS therefore rests heavily on
what can be called pan-narratives, so much so that the existence of AIDS in Asia