Cosmopolitanism has generally been used to describe a philosophy that imagines all humans as citizens of a single “human” community. This article explores a terrestrial cosmopolitanism that challenges the colonial discourse of human exceptionalism by extending the democratization of people to include environmental bodies within their global context, replacing hierarchies with collectivities to reveal humanism’s underrepresented others. Examining interspecies alliances in Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night, I look towards terrestrial cosmopolitanism as an alternative to anthropocentric forms of cosmopolitanism that continue to reinscribe colonialist aspirations and ontologically exclusionary practices. Mootoo’s work decenters how we think about humans and the environment and offers a nuanced depiction of a positive interspecies community that resists harmful humanist taxonomies. Reading the novel’s protagonist, Mala, as a posthuman figure, I argue that her rejection of human language, in conjunction with her nonhuman interactions, positions her as a keeper of collectivity, as she creates a third space of subjectivity in her garden that blurs the boundaries between humans and nonhumans.
Standardized Patient Programs (SPPs) enlist actors to roleplay the symptoms of various diseases and disorders, and to embody a range of personalities. These simulations are used to help improve the communicative practices and professional competencies of future healthcare workers. Focusing on the use of these programs for medical students and doctors, this article establishes a kairology of the SPP to better understand the shifting terrains of patient representation. A kairological account focuses on “historical moments as rhetorical opportunities” (Segal, 2005, p. 23) and, in the case of medicine, illustrates how “changes in [medical] practice are importantly reciprocal with changes in the terms of practice” (Segal, 2005, p. 22). I trace the SPP through various linguistic iterations to reveal how the shifting language of simulated patienthood reflects different orientations towards medical pedagogy and patient populations at significant junctures in time. I conclude my kairology with an examination of the Indigenous Simulated Patient Program, a 2011 pilot program that has the potential to better represent and serve Indigenous peoples in medical pedagogy and practice.
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