Description
Modern biomedicine emerged hand in hand with the standardization of the human body. In the course of the 18th century, European physicians moved from an appreciation of miracles and wonder to the search of uniform laws of nature (Daston, 2019). The trend toward uniformity was consolidated by the rise of anatomical research and statistical methods with their emphasis on classification, objectification, quantification, and standardization (Foucault, 1994; Lock & Nguyen, 2018). From this shift in practices and epistemologies arose an understanding of the body as “a bounded, decontextualized unit” possessing universal characteristics (Lock & Nguyen, 2018, p. 36). The resulting model of the “standard body” continues to inform medical practice today.Despite—or precisely because of—its pervasive influence, the standard body has faced challenges both within and without the biomedical field. For one thing, there are concerns that medical research and practice privileges the experience of white, middle-aged males while providing inadequate care for “non-standard bodies” (Markowitz, 2022; Samra & Hankivsky, 2021). These concerns recall the project of critical phenomenology, with its critique of power and attention to the diversity of embodied experiences (Weiss, Murphy, & Salamon, 2020). It also resonates with the works of phenomenologists of health and illness, who have long resisted the standard body’s tendency toward objectification and erasure of embodied lived experience (Carel, 2008; Leder, 1990).
The (phenomenological) critiques of the standard body point to the gap between medical practice and the lived experience of persons. In their daily lives, people do not inhabit abstract model bodies, but find themselves in richly layered contexts of power and meaning. This phenomenological insight raises questions for the conceptualisation of the body: How to speak of the body in general without losing sight of particular lived experience? What are appropriate methodological principles that would allow one to strike a balance between the body in general and bodies in particular?
The speakers in our panel approach these conceptual and methodological questions by drawing on three case studies: chronic pain, locked-in syndrome, and osteopathic care. They consider the ways in which bodies appear in the context of medical practice and reflect on the implications for the philosophy of medicine. Each of their projects embraces a mixed methodology that combines phenomenological theory and empirical research. After short presentations of their individual papers, the panellists will engage in a conversation with each other and the audience. This will give them the opportunity to discuss the relevance of their insights for problems of medical practice, such as the provision of care for marginalized groups.
| Period | 31 Aug 2024 |
|---|---|
| Event title | OZSW Annual Conference |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Eindhoven, NetherlandsShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |