Critical Medical Humanities: Embracing Entanglement, Taking Risks William Viney,1 Felicity Callard,2 Angela Woods3
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Critical medical humanities Med Humanities: first published as 10.1136/medhum-2015-010692 on 7 June 2015. Downloaded from Critical medical humanities: embracing entanglement, taking risks William Viney,1 Felicity Callard,2 Angela Woods3 1Department of English Studies ABSTRACT keep the field of medical humanities open to new and Centre for Medical What can the medical humanities achieve? This paper voices, challenges, events, and disciplinary (and Humanities, Durham University, fi Durham, UK does not seek to de ne what is meant by the medical anti- or post-disciplinary) articulations of the real- 2Department of Geography and humanities, nor to adjudicate the exact disciplinary or ities of medicine and health; to be adventurous in Centre for Medical Humanities, interdisciplinary knowledges it should offer, but rather to its intellectual pursuits, practical activities, and Durham University, Durham, consider what it might be capable of doing. Exploring articulation with the domain of the political. UK the many valences of the word ‘critical’, we argue here This does not mean abandoning what has given 3School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health, and Centre for for a critical medical humanities characterised by: (i) a the medical humanities its successes, not least its 1 Medical Humanities, Durham widening of the sites and scales of ‘the medical’ beyond resistance to positivist biomedical ‘reductionism’, University, Durham, UK the primal scene of the clinical encounter; (ii) greater its sensitivity to narrative-based interventions and – attention not simply to the context and experience of their limitations,6 11 its designation of the patient– Correspondence to 12 Dr William Viney, Department health and illness, but to their constitution at multiple clinician relation as a renewed focus of attention, of English, Centre for Medical levels; (iii) closer engagement with critical theory, queer its interest in concepts of disease and practices of – Humanities, Caedmon and disability studies, activist politics and other allied diagnosis,13 15 the dynamic role of the arts in Building, Durham University, fields; (iv) recognition that the arts, humanities and health,16 and the therapeutic importance of com- Leazes Road, Durham DH1 social sciences are best viewed not as in service or in parative histories.17 18 But, we argue, it does 1SZ, UK; william.viney@ fl durham.ac.uk opposition to the clinical and life sciences, but as involve actively re ecting upon and interrogating productively entangled with a ‘biomedical culture’; and, the normative and individualist restrictions that Accepted 14 April 2015 following on from this, (v) robust commitment to new may accompany these strategic gains. We are think- forms of interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration. ing, for example, of the frequency with which We go on to introduce the five other articles published some of those aforementioned areas of focus have in this special issue of the journal, reflecting on the ways been enabled by particular—humanist—models of in which collaboration and critique are articulated in the self, of the ill and suffering body, and of modes their analyses of immunology, critical neuroscience, of intervention and care. They have also been (too) toxicity, global clinical labour, and psychological coercion often characterised by a dogged focus on the limita- and workfare. As these articles demonstrate, embracing tions of biomedical knowledge, and on how the the complex role of critical collaborator—one based on humanities might bring empathy to clinical practice notions of entanglement, rather than servility or if allowed adequate epistemological space. antagonism—will, we suggest, develop the imaginative Contributions to this special issue disrupt those http://mh.bmj.com/ and creative heterodox qualities and practices which models and the implicit disciplinary responsibilities have long been recognised as core strengths of the that underpin them: they emerge from fields and medical humanities. areas of concern (including Continental philosophy, science and technology studies, activist politics, queer theory and disability studies) that, while WHAT CAN A CRITICAL MEDICAL HUMANITIES proximate to the usual terrain of the medical ACHIEVE? humanities, have not always been visible to them; on September 25, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. Clinicians, researchers, healthcare workers, artists they are eclectic in the sites in which and scales at and many others who routinely engage with or which enquiries are focused; and they all confront contribute to the medical humanities may despair the uneven global terrain of health and medical that this is yet another attempt to define the care and policy, industry and scientific research.19 – medical humanities,1 4 whether it is taken to be a In addition, this special issue positions the medical discipline or a field of enquiry, or as a set of inter- humanities as a powerful tool through which to Open Access ventions, shared values, or interdisciplinary collab- address not only the meaning and historico-cultural Scan to access more free content orative relationships. This special issue contexts of health and illness, but their very pro- encompasses the many valences of the word ‘crit- duction, concrescence and dispersal across the pre- ical’—urgent, sceptical, evaluative, and mobilising carious, unequal and environmentally degraded the long philosophical and political traditions of societies in which we live. critique5—to discover not what is meant by the In this introductory paper, we briefly open out medical humanities, nor to adjudicate the exact dis- some of the theoretical debates in which we wish ciplinary or interdisciplinary knowledges it should to intervene: the practice of medical humanities offer, but rather to explore what it is capable of scholarship, the position of the medical humanities doing. If diversity and plurality have, in the past, in contemporary society, its relationship with pre- traditionally been strengths for the medical human- dominant biomedical understandings of health and To cite: Viney W, Callard F, ities in terms of encouraging creativity and epis- well-being, its assumed intimacy with certain disci- Woods A. Med Humanit temological innovation, then this collection of plines over others, and the importance of collab- – 2015;41:2 7. papers and responses is intended as an invitation to orative models for creating new resources, methods 2 Viney W, et al. Med Humanit 2015;41:2–7. doi:10.1136/medhum-2015-010692 Critical medical humanities Med Humanities: first published as 10.1136/medhum-2015-010692 on 7 June 2015. Downloaded from and kinds of evidence. We call for more intensive engagement the medical humanities at the level of procedure, and, simultan- in the medical humanities with how health, illness and treat- eously, function as critique by opening the possibility of revolu- ment are constituted in and through tangled webs of human tion at that level. and non-human biosocial organisms, political-economic forma- Here, ‘critical medical humanities’ describes tendencies that tions, discourses and affects. Can the medical humanities inter- are by no means new to or easily achieved by the medical vene more explicitly in ontological questions—in particular, of humanities. The phrase recognises and gives a name to responsi- aetiology, pathogenesis, intervention and cure—rather than, as bilities that we wish to promote, but we in no way wish to has commonly been the case, leaving such questions largely to become gatekeepers to the critical; indeed, it is precisely a pro- the domains of the life sciences and biomedicine? To think prietorial attitude that we hope a sharpened critical spirit can further about such questions demands not a manifesto but an warn against. We believe that a critical medical humanities will – attempt to amplify and magnify a set of existing imperatives,20 22 flourish wherever the procedural norms and routines of the a clarion call for a richer, deeper, more intense debate about humanities, the social sciences, and the biological sciences are what medical humanities can achieve. openly, evenly and creatively interrogated and reworked. This means admitting biases and challenging authorising discourses ‘CRITICAL’ WHAT? that have limited our understandings of what health and illness Twentieth and 21st century thought, especially when generated might be; it also, we suggest, implies resisting strategies of cri- in European and US universities, has seen many turns to and tique that rely simply on inter-discipline condemnation. In so with ‘the critical’ as a rallying point for a new bloc or grouping doing, a framework in which the ‘perspectives’ of the human- of politically committed researchers. Of these, the philosophical ities are pitted against those of the ‘sciences’ or ‘social sciences’ scepticism and political activism of the Frankfurt School, and its might give way to a much richer and more entangled investiga- commitment to critical theory as a means to form an intellectual tion of the bio-psycho-social-physical events that underpin the community and bring about social change, have been among the life, and death, of any organism. most influential. The work of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Hannah Arendt, among others, built on a AGAINST ROLE-PLAY much longer European tradition of written critique, of sustained We call, then, for an intensification of medical humanities’ crit- and methodical analysis of a given object or process. Equally ical engagement with the norms and routines