Modern medicine and the "uncertain body": from corporeality to hyperreality?
This paper (re)considers the role of medical technology at three interrelated levels: first, the extent to which medical technology renders our bodies increasingly "uncertain" at the turn of the century; second, the analytical purchase which the notion of the (medical) cyborg provides regarding contemporary forms of human embodiment; and finally, at a broader level, the issues this raises in relation to a (late) modernist or postmodernist reading of contemporary medical practice. Key themes here include the plastic body, the bionic body, communal/interchangeable bodies, (genetically) engineered/ chosen bodies, and virtual bodies. The paper concludes with a critical appraisal of these themes and issues, arguing for a late modernist position on medical technology as both a positive and negative rationalising force, and a "life political agenda" in which the "all-too-human" quality of human nature is seen as inviolable.
Williams
S J
SJ
Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry, England, U.K.
D001701:Bionics; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D015316:Genetic Therapy; D006801:Humans; D013677:Medical Laboratory Science / Q000639:trends; D010684:Philosophy; D014180:Transplantation