Resumen

RODRIGUEZ MARTINEZ, Elvis Nel  y  GARCIA GAVIDIA, Nelly. Disease and Signicance: the Stigma and Monstruosness of VHI/AIDS. Opcion [online]. 2006, vol.22, n.50, pp.9-28. ISSN 1012-1587.

This article gives partial results on the process of the stigmatization and monstrousness of VIH/AIDS and to do this it describes and interprets this process in relation to the theories of Goffman and Foucault as well as from medical anthropology in which there are three methodological levels: the factual, the narrative and the interpretative. In order to contact the social actors we refer to the ethnography utilized in direct observation and open interviews with those who are ill, their family, biomedical staff and support groups. The results indicate that the illness is configured as a stigma, related herein with the image of a monster originating from the mixture and transgression of norms. It concludes by affirming that the stigmatization of the illness is ambivalent, since it is related to the processes of exclusion of leprosy and the plague, developed in the past in the western world.

Palabras clave : Disease; signification; stigmatization; VHI/AIDS; monstrosity; mixture.