Session 4: Forms of Intimate Evil
Chair: Ayten Sururi


On the Genesis of Intimate, Incidental, and Sociopathic Evil
Christopher Swader
School of Social Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany

This paper problematizes the connection between evil and intimacy and the meaning of this for informal social control.  While selfishness and a lack of concern for others are often considered “evil,” the “good” is in contrast focused on altruism and preventing harm to others.  Of course, we have wicked acts in everyday life which very across the spectrum regarding the intimacy they entail.  On the one hand are those involving a high degree of intimacy, such as the jealous rage between lovers or intra-familial treachery and abuse.  On the other hand are acts boldly attacking the faceless stranger, ‘sociopathic’ in nature, such as serial killings or even modern warfare.  In the middle of these poles lies a complex category of deviant acts that are ‘incidental’ in regard to their intimate content, such as pick pocketings or robberies, which arise out of opportunity.  Drawing on the literary character of Suesskind’s Grenoir from Das Parfum, this paper attempts to address the genesis and normative-regulative conditions of these varying forms of intimate, sociopathic, and incidental ‘evil.’  While the majority of modern crimes are incidental in their intimate content, this very peripheralization of the person in regard to property crimes could be seen as a trend of deintimization.  And while most violent crimes occur where there is an intimate knowledge between the victim and the victimizer, shall we view them as resulting from suffocation from too much intimacy or rather a rebellion against the environment’s intrusion on an ideal intimacy?  Finally, the third category of sociopathic evil, while being the least common, is perhaps the most disturbing, as it is the very meaninglessness, and lack of normative power, of ‘the other’ which fuels sociopathic acts and allows us to label them as such in the first place.

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HIV… easy as ABC
Luisa Orza
Independent Scholar, United Kingdom

This paper presents a sexual and reproductive rights approach to HIV prevention and care, and explores why other approaches, especially those favoured by the Christian right, and the Bush administration in particular (the Abstinence, Be faithful and Condomise, or ABC approach) both try to establish a model of citizenship based on sexual morality, and ignore gendered power relations which render these approaches impracticable for many women and men.
Power relations are nowhere more explicitly present than in the intimate realm, and these often reflect gendered norms, values and beliefs that are current in the broader society. The paper describes how the ABC or abstinence-only approaches are blind to and thereby reinforce cultural perceptions of (female and male) sexuality and gendered power relations in the realm of sexual intimacy. It goes on to look at the impact of such approaches on the sexual and reproductive expression and well-being of people already living with the virus. What becomes of the sexual citizenship of a person whom such approaches would automatically and necessarily deem to have failed in their civic responsibility of remaining uninfected?
In the second part of the paper, I explore whether a sexual and reproductive rights framework offers a more useful approach to HIV prevention and care. What tools would an SRR approach offer programme- and policy makers for implementation? Does it come closer to protecting the citizenship of those already infected and affected by HIV and AIDS? What answers can it offer to the problematic of where my rights end and yours begin – or does it simply render the bedroom into a battle zone of rights?
Finally, what about love, intimacy, trust, identity, and desire? Where do these belong, if at all, in the era of HIV and AIDS?