Showing papers in "Body & Society in 2016"
TL;DR: The turn to the study of antibiotic resistance in microbiology and medicine is examined, focusing on the realization that individual therapies targeted at single pathogens in individual bodies are environmental events affecting bacterial evolution far beyond bodies.
Abstract: Beginning in the 1940s, mass production of antibiotics involved the industrialscale growth of microorganisms to harvest their metabolic products. Unfortunately, the use of antibiotics selects for resistance at answering scale. The turn to the study of antibiotic resistance in microbiology and medicine is examined, focusing on the realization that individual therapies targeted at single pathogens in individual bodies are environmental events affecting bacterial evolution far beyond bodies. In turning to biological manifestations of antibiotic use, sciences fathom material outcomes of their own previous concepts. Archival work with stored soil and clinical samples produces a record described here as ‘the biology of history’: the physical registration of human history in bacterial life. This account thus foregrounds the importance of understanding both the materiality of history and the historicity of matter in theories and concepts of life today.
204 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that the enfolding and reproduction of social life that Bourdieu articulated as habitus is a useful theoretical frame that can be enhanced to critically develop epigenetic understandings of obesity, and vice versa.
Abstract: Bourdieu suggested that the habitus contains the ‘genetic information’ which both allows and disposes successive generations to reproduce the world they inherit from their parents’ generation. Whil...
75 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose the notions of "disembodied exhaust" and "embodied exhaustion" to conceptualise processes of bodily sensorisation and datafication, and explore the nature and function of the data-proxy, and its impact on social relations.
Abstract: Today’s bodies are akin to ‘walking sensor platforms’. Bodies either host, or are the subjects of, an array of sensing devices that act to convert bodily movements, actions and dynamics into circulative data. This article proposes the notions of ‘disembodied exhaust’ and ‘embodied exhaustion’ to conceptualise processes of bodily sensorisation and datafication. As the material body interfaces with networked sensor technologies and sensing infrastructures, it emits disembodied exhaust: gaseous flows of personal information that establish a representational data-proxy. It is this networked actant that progressively structures how embodied subjects experience their daily lives. The significance of this symbiont medium in determining the outcome of interplays between networked individuals and audiences necessitates that it is carefully contrived. The article explores the nature and function of the data-proxy, and its impact on social relations. Drawing on examples that depict individuals engaging with their da...
54 citations
TL;DR: It is shown that learning percussion functions not only to perpetuate diagnostic craft skills but also as a way of knowing of, and through, the resource always at hand; one’s own living breathing body.
Abstract: The growing abundance of medical technologies has led to laments over doctors' sensory de-skilling, technologies viewed as replacing diagnosis based on sensory acumen. The technique of percussion has become emblematic of the kinds of skills considered lost. While disappearing from wards, percussion is still taught in medical schools. By ethnographically following how percussion is taught to and learned by students, this article considers the kinds of bodies configured through this multisensory practice. I suggest that three kinds of bodies arise: skilled bodies; affected bodies; and resonating bodies. As these bodies are crafted, I argue that boundaries between bodies of novices and bodies they learn from blur. Attending to an overlooked dimension of bodily configurations in medicine, self-perception, I show that learning percussion functions not only to perpetuate diagnostic craft skills but also as a way of knowing of, and through, the resource always at hand; one's own living breathing body.
45 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that attending to evidence that can be figured as intra-action enables us to recognize, account for, and attend to diffuse responsibilities for fetal–maternal outcomes that extend beyond mothers to the biosocial milieus of pregnancy.
Abstract: Extensively employed in reproductive science, the term fetal–maternal interface describes how maternal and fetal tissues interact in the womb to produce the transient placenta, purporting a theory ...
42 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider the implications of big data practices for theories about the surveilled subject who, analysed from afar, is still gazed upon, although not directly watched as with previous surveillance systems.
Abstract: This paper considers the implications of big data practices for theories about the surveilled subject who, analysed from afar, is still gazed upon, although not directly watched as with previous surveillance systems. We propose this surveilled subject be viewed through a lens of proximity rather than interactivity, to highlight the normative issues arising within digitally mediated relationships. We interpret the ontological proximity between subjects, data flows and big data surveillance through Merleau-Ponty’s ideas combined with Levinas’ approach to ethical proximity and Coeckelberg’s work on proximity in the digital age. This leads us to highlight how competing normativities, and normative dilemmas in these proximal spaces, manipulate the surveilled subject’s embodied practices to lead the embodied individual towards experiencing them in a local sense. We explore when and how the subject notices these big data practices and then interprets them through translating their experiences into courses of action, inaction or acquiescence.
40 citations
TL;DR: This issue is made up of a special collection of articles that have been submitted to the journal, which tackle issues that have primarily been the subject and object of the life and biological sciences; this includes pregnancy, obesity, antibiotic resistance, and immunity within the context of viruses and super-bugs.
Abstract: This issue is made up of a special collection of articles that have been submitted to the journal, which tackle issues that have primarily been the subject and object of the life and biological sciences; this includes pregnancy, obesity, antibiotic resistance, and immunity within the context of viruses and super-bugs. All of these issues in different ways have increasingly become the subject of theories and methods within the humanities and social sciences. This includes approaches, which work across disciplines and intellectual traditions, in order to open up the complexity of what might count as an object of knowledge within these different contexts. Each paper in this special collection is engaged in productive approaches that cut across disciplines and that enable dialogues and exchanges to take place between the social sciences, life sciences and philosophy. The articles respond to some of the new developments across the life and biological sciences, which include the field of epigenetics, the genome and microbiome and new theorisations of immunity. They engage in different ways with emergent issues, problematics, ontologies, controversies and debates within these fields. These are explored at the intersection of science and technology studies (Landecker), new materialism (Jamieson; Warins et al; Yoshizawa); and critical theorizations of immunity, which draw primarily from cultural studies of immunity, including the writings of Ed Cohen (2009), Robert Esposito (2013) and Margrit Shildrick (2010, 2015) (see Davies et al; Newman et al).
31 citations
TL;DR: It is demonstrated how treatment-as-prevention’s emphasis on individual and collective viral load is transforming the performative dimensions of embodied risk, affect, subjectivity and sex for people living with HIV.
Abstract: The global response to managing the spread of HIV has recently undergone a significant shift with the advent of ‘treatment as prevention’, a strategy which presumes that scaling-up testing and treatment for people living with HIV will produce a broader preventative benefit. Treatment as prevention includes an array of diagnostic, technological and policy developments that are creating new understandings of how HIV circulates in bodies and spaces. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, we contextualize these developments by linking them to systems of governance and discursive subjectivation. The goal of this article is to problematize the growing importance of viral suppression in the management of HIV and the use of related surveillance technologies. For people living with HIV, we demonstrate how treatment-as-prevention’s emphasis on individual and collective viral load is transforming the performative dimensions of embodied risk, affect, subjectivity and sex.
29 citations
TL;DR: The relationship between pleasure and asceticism has been at the core of debates on western subjectivity at least since Nietzsche and as discussed by the authors explores the emergence of non-conformity.
Abstract: The relationship between pleasure and asceticism has been at the core of debates on western subjectivity at least since Nietzsche. Addressing this theme, this article explores the emergence of ‘non...
28 citations
TL;DR: The human body was made legible long ago. But what of the human mind? Is it possible to read the mind, for one human being to know what another is thinking or feeling, their beliefs and intentions? Some developments in contemporary neuroscience suggest the answer to this question is "yes" as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The human body was made legible long ago. But what of the human mind? Is it possible to ‘read’ the mind, for one human being to know what another is thinking or feeling, their beliefs and intentions. And if I can read your mind, how about others – could our authorities, in the criminal justice system or the security services? Some developments in contemporary neuroscience suggest the answer to this question is ‘yes’. While philosophers continue to debate the mind-brain problem, a range of novel technologies of brain imaging have been used to argue that specific mental states, and even specific thoughts, can be identified by characteristic patterns of brain activation; this has led some to propose their use in practices ranging from lie detection and security screening to the assessment of brain activity in persons in persistent vegetative states. This article reviews the history of these developments, sketches their scientific and technical bases, considers some of the epistemological and ontological muta...
26 citations
TL;DR: The issue of what is proper to nature, or life itself, is central to critical accounts of biomedicine and its complex interrelations with social, political and economic forces as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The issue of what is proper to nature, or life itself, is central to critical accounts of biomedicine and its complex interrelations with social, political and economic forces. These engagements, n...
TL;DR: The immuno-political orientation of members of the general public appears to trend towards a productive cosmopolitanism that contrasts with more orthodox bioscientific and governmental approaches to pandemic influenza.
Abstract: This article examines discourse on immunity in general public engagements with pandemic influenza in light of critical theory on immuno-politics and bodily integrity. Interview and focus group disc...
TL;DR: A series of critical theorizations on the biopolitical dimensions of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), with specific attention to what has recently been referred to in the United States as the ‘MRSA Epidemic’.
Abstract: This article offers a series of critical theorizations on the biopolitical dimensions of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), with specific attention to what has recently been referred to in the United States as the ‘MRSA Epidemic’. In particular, we reflect on the proliferation of biomedical discourses around the ‘spread’, and the pathogenic potentialities, of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA). We turn to the work of Roberto Esposito and Jean-Luc Nancy to better make sense of how, during this immunological crisis, the individualized fleshy and fluid body is articulated to dimensions of community and corporeal proximity; the body is thus conceived in popular biopolitical framings as a site of transmission, inoculation, and isolation – as a living ecological and pathological vessel. We give emphasis to the spatial relations of flesh, namely in how biomedical ‘experts’ have sought to (bio-)technologize spaces of heightened communal bodily contact (such...
TL;DR: In this paper, a reconceptualization drawing on the use of echoes as a metaphor is proposed to explore the habitus in motion during the intensely body-centric practice of alpine climbing.
Abstract: Habitus has been an attractive concept for works examining body-centric practices. This article draws on interviews and 18 months of ethnographic research with high-risk climbers primarily throughout North America. An important guide to this research has been the concept of habitus. However, this article demonstrates that there are limits to habitus being used to address the moment of action. The scope of habitus ranges widely, limiting its capacity to effectively address the experience of the individual. Rather than abandoning the concept, habitus can be extended through a reconceptualization drawing on the use of echoes as a metaphor. Using echoes as an allegorical mode of understanding dispositional acquisition and activation, the embodied echo can more radically and precisely explore the habitus in motion during the intensely body-centric practice of alpine climbing. This is particularly critical when exploring the use of speed as a form of safety in the alpine environment.
TL;DR: The notion of the monstrous, as a norm-critical notion, takes as its point of departure that we are always already monstrous, meaning that the western ideal of well-ordered, independent, unleaky, rational embodied subjects is impossible to achieve.
Abstract: Contributing to both ageing research and queer-feminist scholarship, this article introduces feminist philosopher Margrit Shildrick’s queer notion of the monstrous to the subject of ageing and the issue of dealing with frailty within ageing research. The monstrous, as a norm-critical notion, takes as its point of departure that we are always already monstrous, meaning that the western ideal of well-ordered, independent, unleaky, rational embodied subjects is impossible to achieve. From this starting point the normalizing and optimizing strategies of ageing research – here exemplified through the concept of successful ageing and the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease – can be problematized. The notion of the monstrous instead suggests a view on ageing and ‘monstrous’ embodiment which provides room for other, different ways of being recognized as an embodied subject, and for dealing with difference, vulnerability and frailty.
TL;DR: Body & Society as mentioned in this paper explores the surveillance-embodiment nexus and accentuates both the prevalence and consequence of bodies being exposed to surveillance and the consequences of their exposure to it.
Abstract: This article provides an introduction to a special issue of Body & Society that explores the surveillance--embodiment nexus. It accentuates both the prevalence and consequence of bodies being incre...
TL;DR: In this paper, the interface between biomedia and humans was investigated by inviting participants to interact with biometric devices that measured and visualized their body data, and participants struggled with the interface.
Abstract: We investigated the interface between biomedia and humans by inviting participants to interact with biometric devices that measured and visualized their body data. At first, they struggled with the...
TL;DR: The article examines the development and deployment of treatments for addiction that seek to reduce the risks of relapse to drug use, and relates this case to other risk-reducing (but non-curative) medications, particularly cholesterol-red reducing medications.
Abstract: While there has been a significant amount of scholarship done on health and risk in relation to public health and disease prevention, relatively little attention has been paid to therapeutic interventions which seek to manage risks as bodily, and biological, matters. This article elucidates the distinct qualities and logics of these two different approaches to risk management, in relation to Michel Foucault’s conception of the two poles of biopower, that is, a biopolitics of the population and an anatomo-politics of the human body. Using a case study of contemporary addiction biomedicine, the article examines the development and deployment of treatments for addiction that seek to reduce the risks of relapse to drug use, and relates this case to other risk-reducing (but non-curative) medications, particularly cholesterol-reducing medications. The notion of a ‘disease of risk’ is developed in order to identify a range of medical conditions that bear a family resemblance, insofar as they are pharmaceutically...
TL;DR: This paper explored how partners experience intimacy and desire in relation to trans men's body modifications through an empirical analysis of YouTube videos, blogs, and interviews, and argued that partners' experiences of trans men' bodies are crucially shaped by their intimate bonds with trans men as people, rather than reducible to generic parts.
Abstract: Through an empirical analysis of YouTube videos, blogs, and interviews, this article explores how partners experience intimacy and desire in relation to trans men’s body modifications. Building on Salamon’s conception of trans bodies as emerging within relations of desire, I argue that partners’ experiences of trans men’s bodies are crucially shaped by their intimate bonds with trans men as people, rather than reducible to generic parts. Partners continue to experience trans men as essentially the same people through gender transition, despite fears that testosterone might alter their personalities. Their intimate bonds with trans men also open up space for new relations of desire to emerge, including attraction to bodily changes they might otherwise find unattractive. These partnerships work to expand ideas about which bodies can be desired as male or masculine, and undercut the literalness of sexual identity labels. Thus, the lived realities of gender transition, as they materialize within this context,...
TL;DR: In this paper, the Foucauldian political subject and the Lacanian psychoanalytic subject are considered and the importance of hiding for the subject effects of excessive exposure to the Other's gaze.
Abstract: In this article I consider how our experiences of bodily privacy are changing in the contemporary surveillance society. I use biometric technologies as a lens for tracking the changing relationships between the body and privacy. Adopting a broader genealogical perspective, I retrace the role of the body in the constitution of the modern liberal political subject. I consider two different understandings of the subject, the Foucauldian political subject, and the Lacanian psychoanalytic subject. The psychoanalytic perspective serves to appraise the importance of hiding for the subject effects of excessive exposure to the Other’s gaze. I conclude to the importance of the subject’s being able to hide, even when it has nothing to hide. By considering these two facets of subjectivity, political and psychic, I hope to make sense of our enduring and deeply political passionate attachment to privacy.
TL;DR: The starting point for pragmatic philosophy as Peirce envisions it must not be a concept of Being but rather of Feeling as discussed by the authors, which is the starting point of our own pragmatic philosophy.
Abstract: C.S. Peirce begins his 1903 lectures on pragmatism from the premise that the starting point for pragmatic philosophy as he envisions it must not be a concept of Being but rather of Feeling. Pragmatism, he explains, will be ‘an extreme realism’. Its first category will be ‘immediate consciousness’ conceived as a ‘pure presentness’ whose self-appearing is elemental to experience. Firstness cannot be couched in terms of recognition, cannot be contained in any first-person accounting of experience, and most of all can in no way be construed as being ‘in the mind’ of a subject, however the subject is conceived. This article follows some of the byways of Peirce’s thinking on this constitutive field of experience prior to subject/object determinations, making links to James’s ‘pure experience’, Whitehead’s ‘critique of pure feeling’, and Deleuze/Guattari’s ‘being of sensation’.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyse the literature on corporeal commodification and feminist theories for private cord blood banking, the practice of paying to save cord blood for potential future use.
Abstract: Private cord blood banking is the practice of paying to save cord blood for potential future use. Informed by the literature on corporeal commodification and feminist theories, this article analyse...
TL;DR: In this paper, a line-rendering technique in drawing and choreography is analyzed based on a Deleuzian framework, where the co-emergence of thought and feeling in relation to relevant concepts of the body and affect is explored.
Abstract: In this article, I analyse line-rendering techniques in drawing and choreography, based on a Deleuzian framework. This pragmatic approach for understanding affect emerges in three distinct formulations. The first engages the coincidence of drawing and choreography at the limit of reach; the second investigates how trace and movement generate different yet mutually resonant versions of semblance. The third framework considers the potential for improvisation in the irreconcilability of contour and surface in the weighted line. These three framings generate an experimental milieu in which I articulate the co-emergence of thought and feeling in relation to relevant concepts of the body and affect. In activating affective intensity in different line-rendering operations, this analysis traces the way that affects help to modulate tendencies of moving, feeling and thinking over a series of operations.