After Diagnosis. HIV the Prospect of Finitude, and Biographical Self-Construction

How can individuals in contemporary Western societies constitute themselves as mortal beings? This question is addressed, in the following paper, on the basis of a series of interviews with Italian persons who have HIV or AIDS. Typically, at the time of diagnosis, the knowledge of having HIV was associated to the prospect of imminent death; this shock provoked the disruption of a particularly cherished aspect of the previously taken-for-granted self-definition.