Abstract:

From the perspective of medical anthropology and based on interviews and observations of people living with HIV (PLWH), this article uses "normal" as a core concept to explore how antiretroviral therapy (ART) is involved in the construction of the daily lives of PLWH through the creation of "normalcy", and how these people cope with a standardized "normal life" through their own life practices. In this process, the HIV governance system considers the creation of a "normal body" that conforms to medical standards as its primary goal to ensure the overall safety of society with ART as a normalizing and transforming means for infected people. To this end, the governance system utilizes ethics and law to frame the acceptance of ART as the responsibility and obligation of PLWH that will lead them to a "normal future". This has made accepting ART a spontaneous choice for the infected individuals. However, when the "normality" envisioned by people living with HIV clashes with what the governance system seeks to impose, various difficulties arose in their lives. The governance system sees these aberrations as a necessary path to "normalcy", thus the infected person must endure them in order to "live a normal life". PLWH must have wondered what "normal life" is for, but in order to continue their treatment, they must construct a version of "normal life" that differs from the norm, or even deviates from it according to the logic of their own life, which is inevitably full of the traces of medicine and technology.

Key words: human immunodeficiency virus, normal, daily life, antiretroviral therapy