Absurd against illness : "Blues for the lady with red spots" by Zoran Ferić

Absurd against Illness. Bleus for the Lady with Red Spots by Zoran Ferić. The text analyses first part of the story Bleus for the Lady with Red Spots called A Hypochondriac written by contemporary Croatian writer Zoran Ferić. A plot of the story takes places in a hospital where characters are waiting for being tested for HIV. This waiting room is a heterotopia, using concept elaborated by Michel Foucault, a specific place of Otherness, where classic rules and even lapse of time are disrupted. In the famous essay AIDS and Its Metaphors Susan Sontag focuses on metaphors and stereotypes linked with HIV and AIDS. Many of her thesis appear in Ferić's story, like regarding plagues as judgments on society, describing HIV as punishments of some groups (drug users, homosexuals, etc.), African origin of the virus and so on. Other illness which occurs in the story is hypochondria which can be interpreted in a biographical key, but it entitles to read the story as filled with negative stereotypes, referring not only to HIV and AIDS, but also women, homosexuals, and even Bosnians. However, Ferić describes these stereotypes in a grotesque and humorous way, using absurd and mixing tragic with funny, sacred with profane, in a style which can be considered by Mikhail Bakhtin category of the carnival. It leads to conclusion that laughing degrades power, absurd and humour, deconstruct taboo and fear of illness.