Jean-Godefroy Bidima

Sickness and Care. A Sociopolitical Issue

In the so-called postcolonial countries, we are used to interrogating political philosophy by insisting upon the question of citizenship, particularly the manner in which the notion of public democratic space (l’espace public démocratique) is developed. This vast project often demands that we relook at issues such as justice, the peace that is established after war and genocide, and particularly access to new juridical instruments of international law. 

At the center of these preoccupations can be found the State and its symbols, as well as the manner in which communities restructure themselves under the auspices of this State. Yet beyond that, it is a question of sounding out how various subjectivities are made and unmade. The citizen —the subject— expresses himself, even while he is placed in a context of fragility. This fragility is experienced through sickness, and the coming of AIDS to Africa permits African political philosophy – until now too focused on the State, elections, colonial history, and ethnophilosophy – to return to the center of its preoccupations. Sickness and Care are moments of fragility which appeal to the great anthropological referents, that is Subject, community, speech, gaze, body, presence, disappearance, degradation, bond, justice, and duty. Regarding Subject, how can we understand this in a context of fragility? The Subject’s community has forged certain bonds with him through shared symbols, fruits of socialization, but how is this space reinforced or broken in the case of illness? How is the gaze constructed, how does speech organize itself, and how does the body act during illness, which may be considered both an observable fact as well as representation? In conjunction with our primal fears and our expectations, to what extent does the disintegration of the body caused by the illness combined with the dread of disappearing affect relationships between subjects faced with the declaration of sickness, with the persistence of pain, with the permanence of death, and with the substance of our connection with the Other? Care, comfort, promote life, but in the name of what principles?