Making sense of HIV/AIDS: Pascal de Duve and the sensitive historian of education1

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s historians, in general, have increasingly engaged in critical analyses of the emergence and development of what has come to be known as ‘the HIV/AIDS pandemic’. Historians of education have also become interested in the role-played by education in the history of HIV/AIDS. Although the existing educational histories have successfully examined the multiple and far-reaching power structures that helped shape the educational responses to the disease, I will argue that their focus on ideological and geopolitical power structures runs the risk of losing sight of the crucial and often sensorial responses of individuals who have played a part in the educational history of HIV/AIDS. One such individual is the Flemish philosopher Pascal de Duve, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1989. De Duve’s particular approach to the disease clearly illustrate the importance of the senses in how people attributed particular meanings to HIV/AIDS. Knowing that this approach would prove surprising to both his readership and to his wider television audience, de Duve employed sensory experiences and modes of communication (for instance, gesture) to educative ends. I conclude that an intersensorial approach to the past will render historians of education more sensitive to unexpected personal responses towards HIV/AIDS to unexpected personal responses towards HIV/AIDS.