The body and the digital archive: the Visible Human Project and the computerization of medicine

Abstract

This paper addresses itself to some biopolitical issues raised by the computerization of medicine. It is now widely accepted in cultural studies and the sociology of medicine that the computer offers a conceptual model to medicine for the organization of human bodies, and that bodies are increasingly understood as forms of digital archive. However this paper uses one recent development in medical computer imaging, the Visible Human Project, to argue that the computerization of medicine also involves a material reorganization of at least some bodies, a reorganization which reveals a biopolitical hierarchy of more and less valuable bodies within the framework of high-technology medicine.

Keywords

biopolitics medical culture medical technology Visible Human Project

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