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Critical medical humanities: embracing entanglement, taking risks

What can the medical humanities achieve? This paper does not seek to define what is meant by the medical humanities, nor to adjudicate the exact disciplinary or interdisciplinary knowledges it should offer, but rather to consider what it might be capable of doing. Exploring the many valences of the...

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Autores principales: Viney, William, Callard, Felicity, Woods, Angela
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4484495/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26052111
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2015-010692
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author Viney, William
Callard, Felicity
Woods, Angela
author_facet Viney, William
Callard, Felicity
Woods, Angela
author_sort Viney, William
collection PubMed
description What can the medical humanities achieve? This paper does not seek to define what is meant by the medical humanities, nor to adjudicate the exact disciplinary or interdisciplinary knowledges it should offer, but rather to consider what it might be capable of doing. Exploring the many valences of the word ‘critical’, we argue here for a critical medical humanities characterised by: (i) a widening of the sites and scales of ‘the medical’ beyond the primal scene of the clinical encounter; (ii) greater attention not simply to the context and experience of health and illness, but to their constitution at multiple levels; (iii) closer engagement with critical theory, queer and disability studies, activist politics and other allied fields; (iv) recognition that the arts, humanities and social sciences are best viewed not as in service or in opposition to the clinical and life sciences, but as productively entangled with a ‘biomedical culture’; and, following on from this, (v) robust commitment to new forms of interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration. We go on to introduce the five other articles published in this special issue of the journal, reflecting on the ways in which collaboration and critique are articulated in their analyses of immunology, critical neuroscience, toxicity, global clinical labour, and psychological coercion and workfare. As these articles demonstrate, embracing the complex role of critical collaborator—one based on notions of entanglement, rather than servility or antagonism—will, we suggest, develop the imaginative and creative heterodox qualities and practices which have long been recognised as core strengths of the medical humanities.
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spelling pubmed-44844952015-07-10 Critical medical humanities: embracing entanglement, taking risks Viney, William Callard, Felicity Woods, Angela Med Humanit Critical Medical Humanities What can the medical humanities achieve? This paper does not seek to define what is meant by the medical humanities, nor to adjudicate the exact disciplinary or interdisciplinary knowledges it should offer, but rather to consider what it might be capable of doing. Exploring the many valences of the word ‘critical’, we argue here for a critical medical humanities characterised by: (i) a widening of the sites and scales of ‘the medical’ beyond the primal scene of the clinical encounter; (ii) greater attention not simply to the context and experience of health and illness, but to their constitution at multiple levels; (iii) closer engagement with critical theory, queer and disability studies, activist politics and other allied fields; (iv) recognition that the arts, humanities and social sciences are best viewed not as in service or in opposition to the clinical and life sciences, but as productively entangled with a ‘biomedical culture’; and, following on from this, (v) robust commitment to new forms of interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration. We go on to introduce the five other articles published in this special issue of the journal, reflecting on the ways in which collaboration and critique are articulated in their analyses of immunology, critical neuroscience, toxicity, global clinical labour, and psychological coercion and workfare. As these articles demonstrate, embracing the complex role of critical collaborator—one based on notions of entanglement, rather than servility or antagonism—will, we suggest, develop the imaginative and creative heterodox qualities and practices which have long been recognised as core strengths of the medical humanities. BMJ Publishing Group 2015-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4484495/ /pubmed/26052111 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2015-010692 Text en Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Critical Medical Humanities
Viney, William
Callard, Felicity
Woods, Angela
Critical medical humanities: embracing entanglement, taking risks
title Critical medical humanities: embracing entanglement, taking risks
title_full Critical medical humanities: embracing entanglement, taking risks
title_fullStr Critical medical humanities: embracing entanglement, taking risks
title_full_unstemmed Critical medical humanities: embracing entanglement, taking risks
title_short Critical medical humanities: embracing entanglement, taking risks
title_sort critical medical humanities: embracing entanglement, taking risks
topic Critical Medical Humanities
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4484495/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26052111
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2015-010692
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