Affected Doctors: Dead Bodies and Affective and Professional Cultures in Early Modern European Anatomy

Abstract

From the end of the thirteenth century, when the practice of human anatomical dissections emerged in Europe, the dead body became part of the cultural economy of knowledge. This had epistemic, technical, and social consequences, in which the affective dimension played a crucial role. The type of manipulations the corpse underwent brought into play affective phenomena of unusual intensity. To a great extent, anatomy owed its repertoire of gestures, spaces, and instruments to the need to control these affects, and this repertoire contributed to the discourse that shaped the professional identity of anatomists. Rather than being simply knowledge trapped in a web of preexisting sensibilities, anatomy was, in early modern Europe, a locus where affective cultures were produced and negotiated among several professional and social groups.