PrEPped Intimacies in Berlin: Affective Ambivalences and Embodied Subjects in Biomedical HIV-Prevention

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Since the outbreak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, the condom and, later on HIV therapy, have been the only means of preventing a sexual transmission of the virus. A biomedical technology now introduces a new era in the prevention of HIV: taken on a daily basis or “on demand”, “Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis” (PrEP) proved to be highly effective in preventing an HIV infection. In Germany, PrEP has been available on prescription since October 2016 and the costs for the drug as well as the three-monthly examinations have been covered by public health insurance since September 2019. The introduction of the biomedical prophylaxis is characterized by affective ambivalences: while the drug has raised hopes for ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the stigmatization of HIV-positive people, it has also incited moralizing debates about condom-free sex and the danger of spreading other sexually transmitted infections.The project “PrEPped Intimacies in Berlin” approaches the new HIV prophylaxis from the (sub-)disciplines of medical and queer anthropology and investigates its multiple sociocultural effects among gay men in the city who constitute the main user group of PrEP. It conceptualizes PrEP as an affective, discursive and material formation in the lives, experiences and bodies of gay men as well as in the specific context of Berlin, a city with a high international appeal and a reputation for its sexual permissiveness. The project investigates ethnographically how the biomedical prophylaxis shapes embodied subjects and transforms intimate encounters – together with the health publics, subcultural discourses and therapeutic situations within which PrEP itself is situated. It thus asks for the relations, affects and discourses that PrEP produces in Berlin and investigates how intimacies, corporealities and subjectivities emerge in this process.Ethnographic field research will be conducted over ten months within the Berlin gay community and in the field of HIV prevention to attend to the affective ambivalences and embodied subjects of the novel biomedical HIV prophylaxis. In order to get to an understanding of individual and institutional negotiations regarding PrEP, participant observation will be carried out by working for various HIV prevention projects. As part of ethnographic fieldwork, the project will focus on the subjective experiences of gay men through different interview formats (biographical-narrative, and partially follow-up, interviews; focus groups; semi-structured online interviews) and complement the collected data with expert interviews in the field of HIV prevention as well as the analysis of epidemiological discourses and online dating profiles.