contradicting maternity hiv positive motherhood in south africa
p drawing on rich and poignant interviews with mothers who have been diagnosed hiv positive contradicting maternity provides a rare perspective of motherhood from the mothers point of view . p the book explores the situation in which two very powerful identities those of motherhood and of being hiv positive collide in the same moment . this collision takes place at the interface of complex and often split social and personal meanings concerning the sanctity of motherhood and the anxieties of hiv . the book offers an interpretation of how these meanings resonate with and also fail to encompass the experiences surrounding hiv positive mothers . photographs academic literature and the accounts of real women are read with both a psychodynamic and discursive eye highlighting the contradictions within maternal experience as well as between maternal experience and the social imagination . p contradicting maternity will appeal to scholars students and practitioners in psychology the social sciences and the health professions . the sensitive and readable analysis will also be of interest to mothers whether hiv positive or not .