Paper:This Path Is Full of Thorns”: Narrative, Subjunctivity, and HIV in Indonesia

“This Path Is Full of Thorns”: Narrative, Subjunctivity, and HIV in Indonesia

Annemarie Samuels

First published: 05 March 2018

https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12194

Reference 

Samuels, A. (2018). “This Path Is Full of Thorns”: Narrative, Subjunctivity, and HIV in Indonesia. Ethos, 46(1), 95-114.

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In this article, I focus on the active fostering of subjunctivity in processes of narrative worldmaking. Drawing extensively from the narrative of an HIV‐positive woman in Indonesia, I show that by subjunctively leaving open multiple narrative trajectories and future possibilities, individuals may navigate the ethical complexities of their lives and maintain relationships with the world and others while staying true to the things that really matter to them. I suggest that although entertaining a range of possible future trajectories may involve constructing several alternative narrative plots, most of the time there is no plot to be followed, and not determining future parallel plots may be more helpful in balancing conflicting ethical demands. By not imagining clear beginnings and endings of narratives yet actively retaining narrative possibilities, values that may seem incompatible in the present may then all be kept open for future moral striving. [narrative, subjunctivity, ethics, HIV]

Full paper in 

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/etho.12194

Conclusion

Anthropological studies of the subjunctive elements in narratives have shown that people may retain multiple narrative perspectives on the beginnings and futures of their life trajectories to make sense of the difficult situations in which they find themselves (Garro 2003; Good 1994; Good and Good 1994; Mattingly 2014; Whyte 2002). Drawing on Tabinda's narrative of struggle with illness, marriage, and poverty, I have argued that narrators not only actively employ subjunctivity to give meaning to experience, but also to navigate relationships of value in the world in acts of narrative worldmaking. The subjunctive character of narrative performances may help to stay true to multiple things that really matter, even though these things may present conflicting moral demands. Although entertaining a range of possible past and future trajectories may involve constructing different parallel narrative plots (Mattingly 2014, 124), it may also leave these possibilities plotless, indeterminate, and open to the options available in the process of balancing values and social relations with the world and others. By not imagining clear beginnings and endings of narratives yet actively retaining narrative possibilities and even embracing the mysterious, values that may seem incompatible in the present—such as, in Tabinda's narrative, a good marriage and pursuing health care, or being a good mother and having a stable household—may all be kept open for future moral striving.

In times of AIDS, people around the world may hold on to different interpretations of the illness that strikes them as well as a range of options for treatment, nurturing hope, desire, and optimism amidst conditions of uncertainty, anxiety, and pain (see, e.g., Whyte 2002; Wood and Lambert 2008). An HIV diagnosis itself may not offer certainty—something the people involved may indeed not all strive for (cf. Pinto 2012). Diagnosis, in Tabinda's narrative, is one event of contestation that she frames both within the parameters of biomedical discourse (calling into question the validity of the blood test) and outside of it (referring to a divine whispering as a potentially more reliable source of knowledge). Arguably, a future positive test result may similarly not foreclose other diagnostic possibilities (cf. Whyte 2002, 180). It is Tabinda's active investment in these options that gives “creative potency” to her narrative experience (Good 1994, 153).

Yet, Tabinda's narrative also shows that although subjunctivity may provide a mode of narrative that helps one attune to the world while staying fidelious to what really matters (cf. Zigon 2014a)—this is by no means an easy process. Keeping open multiple narrative possibilities, including those of mysterious or otherwise spiritual intervention, also means retaining the anxiety of uncertainty and the possibility of failure. Yet, sometimes, it is the indeterminacy offered by the subjunctive that may help people to go on in the face of adversity and aspire for a better life.