LEGAL CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE MARGINS OF SOCIETY - STRUGGLES AGAINST STIGMATIZATION IN THE AIDS CRISIS

This study compares how two groups of people, situated at the margins of society, position themselves differently with regard to the law: the HIV-infected women see themselves as objects of surveillance, while the gay men with HIV imagine themselves as rights-bearers. At the same time, both groups are influenced by a core liberal presupposition embedded in the American legal order that promotes individualism. Both groups express the conditions of their lives as a product of individual choices, and as a consequence, turn stigmatization, trouble, and injury back upon themselves in the form of self-blame. This expression of self-blame is most pervasive among the female injection drug users, in that it is reinforced by moral and therapeutic discourses associated with drug addiction.