The Manufacture of Bodies in Surgery

Abstract

This paper presents an ethnographic account of surgical operations as encounters of two disciplined bodies — a parcelled `patient-body', and an aggregated `surgeon-body'. It describes the practices of making bodies operable, of cooperating and of creating anatomical visibility by means of highly skilled manipulations and optical technology. The discussion relates features of surgical practice to two issues raised in science studies: (1) Ritual aspects of scientific work; how does a medical science deal with the life-world esteem for its object?; and (2) The relation of experience and representation; how do patients' bodies come to embody the properties of anatomical pictures? A constructivist interpretation is offered: the anatomical body is an accomplishment of the sculptural practice of operations.

Visual Expertise as Embodied Practice

“…Stefan Hirschauer (1991) has for instance addressed the link between physicians, patients' bodies, and anatomical representations by looking at the work done during surgery. He argues that surgeons have to acquire two bodies in their education: their own trained body and the abstract body as learnt from textbooks and other representations.…”

Continuity and change: semiotic relations across multimodal texts in surgical education

“…In operations, both the object that is selected for interpretation and the view of that object is fleeting (Hirschauer 1991): the appearance of the object changes as the surgeons operate on it; and the view of the object is contingent on retraction and camera angle: "stuff" needs to be removed, pushed aside, and so forth for structures to become visible. Trainees may only recognize and identify these structures if the consultant draws attention to them and points at them, as the consultant in our third text did.…”

Cognitive ethnography of medical interactions. Doctors and nurses make decisions

“…Questo corpo é come se fosse dimenticato, diventa quindi intenzionalmente materia manipolata dall'esperto: «The body is unmindful, in which human intention and personality disappear from the body» (Luhrmann, 2001, p. 88). A questo fine, osservando gli ambienti d'intervento chirurgico e medico, Stephen Hirschauer (1991), Harry Collins (1994) e Jean Peneff (1997) mostrano come la manipolazione del corpo del paziente si estenda agli agenti presenti all'intervento, in modo che i medici e infermieri diventino 'orecchie per esperti', che pensino ad alta voce per migliorare la loro performance cognitiva.…”