UNSPECIFIED. (1997) Modern medicine and the ''uncertain body'': From corporeality to hyperreality? SOCIAL SCIENCE & MEDICINE, 45 (7). pp. 1041-1049. ISSN 0277-9536

Abstract

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. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.

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