Making MSM: Biopolitical subjects in Vietnam

Abstract

This contribution explores the discursive and practical marking of gay males as targets of a biopolitical regime whose aim, ostensibly, was and is to secure the health and well-being of the Vietnamese population. I consider how the contemporary apparatus constructed to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Vietnam, one funded by the United States, operates by inducing adherence to a new regime that turns on subjectivation and risk calculation.