This article is an investigation into the ways in which anatomico-medical bodies are produced through means of public mediation and spectacle technologies. The examples of `RealVideo surgery' (surgical operations broadcast live over the Web) and the early modern anatomy theaters, provide two instances where `the body' enframed by science is mediated via technology. Referencing the genealogical work of Michel Foucault, and through an analysis of the anatomy theaters and RealVideo surgery, this article attempts to show how such institutionally framed and legitimizing science practices do not simply produce `the body', but are rather involved in multiply articulating different types of technoscientific bodies. At issue in such instances are the ways in which practices and habits of reading, decoding and recognizing bodies are being reconfigured in the utilization of such technologies as the Internet and Web, and the possible modes of critical analysis which may develop from within such instances.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
America's Health Network (AHN): http: //www.ahn.com
2.
Bataille, Georges
(1985) Visions of Excess, Selected Writings, 1927-1939, ed. Allan Stoekl. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
3.
Bataille, Georges
, Michel Leiris, Marcel Griaule, Carl Einstein and Robert Desnos (1995) Encyclopedia Acephalica. London: Atlas.
4.
Baudrillard, Jean
(1988) The Ecstasy of Communication, trans. Bernard Schutze and Caroline Schutze. New York: Semiotext(e).
5.
BBC News Online (1998) `Internet Heart Surgery First', BBC Online Network (18 August): http://news.bbc.co.uk: 80/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_153000/153819.stm
6.
Biospace: http: //www.biospace.com
7.
Burroughs, William
(1990) Naked Lunch. New York: Grove.
8.
Butler, Judith
(1993) Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge.
9.
Cartwright, Lisa
(1995) Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine's Visual Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
10.
Cosans, Christopher
(1995) `The Platonic Origins of Anatomy', Perspectives in Biology and Medicine38(4): 581-596.
11.
Cosans, Christopher
(1997) `Galen's Critique of Rationalist and Empiricist Anatomy', Journal of the History of Biology30(1): 35-54.
12.
Cunningham, Andrew
(1997) The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients. Brookfield, VT: Scolar.
13.
Daston, Lorraine
(1998) `The Nature of Nature in Early Modern Europe', Configurations6(2): 149-172.
14.
de C.M. Saunders
, J.B. and Charles O'Malley (1950) The Illustrations from the Works of Andreas Vesalius. New York: Dover.
15.
Eriksson, Ruben
(1959) Andreas Vesalius' First Public Anatomy at Bologna, 1540: An Eyewitness Report by Baldasar Heseler. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksells.
16.
Ferrari, Giovanna
(1987) `Public Anatomy Lessons and the Carnival: The Anatomy Theatre of Bologna', Past and Present117: 50-106.
17.
Foss, Laurence
and Kenneth Rothenberg (1987) The Second Medical Revolution: From Biomedicine to Infomedicine. Boston, MA: New Science Library.
18.
Foucault, Michel
(1973a) The Birth of the Clinic. New York: Vintage.
19.
Foucault, Michel
(1973b) The Order of Things. New York: Vintage.
20.
Foucault, Michel
(1978) The History of Sexuality, Vol. I. New York: Vintage.
21.
Foucault, Michel
(1979) Discipline & Punish. New York: Vintage.
22.
Foucault, Michel
(1994) Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984, Vol. I, ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: The New Press.
23.
Foucault, Michel
(1996) Foucault Live: Selected Interviews 1961-1984, ed. Sylvère Lotringer. New York: Semiotext(e).
24.
Gallagher, Catherine
and Thomas Laqueur (eds) (1991) The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press.
25.
Hafner, Katie
and Matthew Lyon (1988) Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New York: Touchstone.
26.
Haraway, Donna
(1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. New York: Routledge.
27.
Hayles, N. Katherine
(1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
28.
Hillman, David
and Carla Mazzio (eds) (1997) The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corpoeality in Early Modern Europe. New York: Routledge.
29.
Hirschauer, Stefan
(1991) `The Manufacture of Bodies in Surgery', Social Studies of Science21: 279-319.
30.
Howell, Joel
(1995) Technology in the Hospital: Transforming Patient Care in the Early Twentieth Century. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
31.
Jones, Colin
and Roy Porter (eds) (1998) Reassessing Foucault: Power, Medicine and the Body. New York: Routledge.
32.
Jordanova, Ludmilla
and Deanna Petherbridge (1997) The Quick and the Dead: Artists and Anatomy. Berkeley: University of California Press.
33.
Kemp, Martin
(1993) ` “The Mark of Truth”: Looking and Learning in Some Anatomical Illustrations from the Renaissance and Eighteenth Century', in W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds) Medicine and the Five Senses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
34.
Kemp, Martin
(1996) `Temples of the Body and Temples of the Cosmos: Vision and Visualization in the Vesalian and Copernican Revolutions', in Brian S. Baigrie (ed.) Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
35.
Kevles, Bettyann Holtzmann
(1997) Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
36.
Knight, Bernard
(1980) Discovering the Human Body. New York: Lippincott and Crowell.
37.
Laqueur, Thomas
(1990) Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
38.
Lawrence, Christopher
(ed.) (1992) Medical Theory, Surgical Practice: Studies in the History of Surgery. London: Routledge.
39.
Levin, David Michael
(1990) `The Discursive Formation of the Body in the History of Medicine', The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy15(5): 515-538.
40.
Lind, L.R.
(1975) Studies in Pre-Vesalian Anatomy: Biography, Translations, Documents. Philadelphia, PA: The American Philosophical Society.
41.
Lock, Margaret
(1997) `Decentering the Natural Body: Making Difference Matter', Configurations5(2): 267-292.
42.
O'Malley, Charles
(1964) Andreas Vesalius of Brussels. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
43.
Park, Katherine
(1995) `The Life of the Corpse: Division and Dissection in Late Medieval Europe', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences50: 111-132.
44.
Persaud, T.V.N.
(1997) A History of Anatomy: The Post-Vesalian Era. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
45.
Pouchelle, Marie-Christine
(1990) The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Polity Press.
46.
RealAudio: http: //www.realaudio.com
47.
Roberts, K.B.
(1992) The Fabric of the Body: European Traditions of Anatomical Illustrations. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
48.
Rupp, Jan C.C.
(1990) `Matters of Life and Death: The Social and Cultural Conditions of the Rise of Anatomical Theaters, with Special Reference to Seventeenth Century Holland', History of Science28: 263-287.
49.
Rupp, Jan C.C.
(1992) `Michel Foucault, Body Politics and the Rise and Expansion of Modern Anatomy', Journal of Historical Sociology5(1): 31-60.
50.
Sawday, Jonathan
(1995) The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture. New York: Routledge.
51.
Schultz, Bernard
(1985) Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press.
52.
Singer, Charles
(1957) A Short History of Anatomy from the Greeks to Harvey. New York: Dover.
53.
Siraisi, Nancy
(1994) `Vesalius and Human Diversity in De Humani Corporis Fabrica', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes57: 60-88.
54.
Siraisi, Nancy
(1995) `Early Anatomy in Comparative Perspective: An Introduction', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences50: 3-10.
55.
Siraisi, Nancy
(1997) `Vesalius and the Reading of Galen's Teleology', Renaissance Quarterly50: 1-37.
56.
Stafford, Barbara Maria
(1997) Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
57.
Tierney, Thomas F.
(1998) `Anatomy and Governmentality: A Foucauldian Perspective on Death and Medicine in Modernity', Theory & Event2(1): http://calliope.jhu.edu:80/journals/theory_&_event
58.
Tsiaras, Alexander
(1997) Body Voyage: A Three-Dimensional Tour of a Real Human Body. New York: Time-Warner.
