1887
Volume 9, Issue 1
  • ISSN 2211-3770
  • E-ISSN: 2211-3789
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Abstract

Abstract

Wolof ethics of “discretion” have historically conflated perceived communicative excess with bodily contagion and associated both with queer subjects. For health non-governmental organizations (NGOs), online dating among gay Senegalese men presents two risks to : contagious sex and contagious discourse. A Senegalese eHealth NGO hires gay men to send HIV/AIDS prevention messages through Facebook and online dating websites in order to contain HIV and, invoking , contain queer communication and bodies. This NGO projects a heteronormative metapragmatic model of health communication, casting information as instrument of containment, and a unitary, de-eroticized digital self as informational messenger. In what I call queer biocommunicability, eHealth activists create erotically seductive digital personae incongruous with offline characteristics. Construed as communicative-bodily excess, digital seductions actually facilitate information exchange. NGOs instrumentalize queer biocommunicability to bolster a care framework that marginalizes queer subjects. This paper traces historical underpinnings and ethical-political implications of heteronormative biocommunicability’s dependence on queer transgression.

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2020-02-24
2025-02-08
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): biocommunicability; care; digital media; intimacy; metapragmatics; queer theory; Senegal
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