Post-Patienthood. Health Risks and the Reflexivity of Self-Embodiment
Abstract
By discussing social and technological developments in the system of biomedicine, the article aims to postulate an identity pattern in which human embodiment is inscribed in the context of advanced biotechnologies, especially genetics and genomics. The concept of post-patienthood refers to individual identity as a construct that relates the person’s present medical condition to a range of possible future scenarios, each formulated on the basis of genetic susceptibility to a particular disease. The post-patient, therefore, is neither healthy nor ill, and the present medical condition could be irrelevant to their sense of embodiment.
Keywords
biomedicalization; embodiment; patient; risk; genetics
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University of Silesia in Katowice Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3780-0020
Tomasz Burzyński received his PhD in 2009 from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. He works at the Institute of Literary Studies where he teaches Sociology, Media Studies, and Cultural Studies. His research interests include cultural studies and cultural theory, sociology of risk, theories of trust, and discourses of health and illness. Recent publications: “Sociologizing Automotive Heritage. Traditions of Automobile Folklore and the Challenges of Risk Society,” in: The Routledge Companion to Automobile Heritage, Culture, and Preservation, red. J. Clark, B. Stiefel. (New York and London: Routledge: 2020); “Systemic Intertextuality. A Morphogenetic Perspective,” Text Matters. A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture 10 (2020).
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