On the Body In Medical Culture

There is a nice review up on H-Net of a new anthology entitled The Body in Medical Culture.  Here is an excerpt:

Within The Body in Medical Culture, Elizabeth Klaver and her contributors engage with themes related to how concepts and constructions of the body ultimately shape people’s experiences of agency and objectification within medical culture. It is argued throughout that the medicalized body is central to the work of doctors, nurses, medical examiners, and other professionals as an object of scrutiny, and that these groups mediate broader cultural understandings of pathology, illness, and physical transformation during their interaction with the body. Metaphors and models of the body are frequently used to understand medical phenomena, research, and diagnosis. Klaver carefully situates her collection at a mid-point between culture and medicine, adopting a constructivist realism approach, which suggests that an external reality exists outside of cultural representation. In other words, she recognizes a place for the body’s materiality as distinct from the medicalized body.

The review is recommended, and though I have not yet read the book, I daresay that is worth reading as well.

(h/t H-DISABILITY listserv)

Comments

[Roy M. Poses MD]

In what language was that review written?

Is there an English language version that I could understand?

[Daniel S. Goldberg]

Roy,

Perhaps I can recommend you spend more time working with the Academic Sentence Generator?

http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/write-sentence.htm

That could help.

Cultural studies in general are rife with this kind of jargon, which does, I readily admit, detract from the substance. This is partly why, despite my considerable background and facility with the substance and style of critical theory, I expressly choose not to write in the styles most typical of these approaches. I tend to find it limits one's capacity to engage persons outside of that particular field, and because I am interested in interdisciplinary work, that kind of practical engagement is very important for me.

[Roy M. Poses MD]

I do appreciate your writing style, in contrast to that of the review above.

I see your Academic Sentence Generator, and raise you the post modernism generator:
http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/