Tidsskrift for Forskning i Sygdom og Samfund, 2013

For patients suffering from acute kidney failure technology is the only means of survival until a kidney graft can be secured 1-a process which may take several years. In this article I focus on patients' ongoing, situated, and embodied practices of knowing and doing as part of their caring for kidney failure. In these practices the action of blood, veins, needles, and the dialysis machine are of central import. I argue that kidney failure is »done« through a variety of cultural practices, including medical technology. It is a process of material reshaping I term 'vein action'. The concept of "doing" is elaborated upon by linking it to theories of neo-materialism and particularly Karen Barad's notion of intra-activity. I investigate how flowing of blood between the patient and the dialysis machine is constituted by analyzing the material and performative qualities of these entities as part of living with kidney failure. I ask how does the materiality of the body, needle, and machine affect the doing of dialysis, and by extension the doing of kidney failure, in an everyday context? What does doing dialysis tell us about the nature of care-oriented agency?

Choice Reviews Online, 2009

Nuncius, 27, 2, 2012

2016

2019

Exploring the ways through which use of human bodies and tissues in art can expose us to the abject and the body of the real The body has long been a subject of art, but only reasonably recently in the history of art has the body begun to be seen as instrument and even material. Artists have, for centuries, come ever closer to capturing the fullness of the human form, a pursuit marked by traditions such as the drawing room, and even the continuation of anatomy classes in schools such as the Ruskin. Now being explored in ever more diverse manners, the role of the body, through traditions such as performance art, has pushed beyond subject, becoming a medium and tool. With this new tradition, artists are able to push the limits of representation and experience in new and innovative ways. For some artists, this can mean confronting us with our own vulnerability through use of human tissues in a fragmentation of the body that can frighten and repel us. In the writings of Jacques Lacan, the real refers to the neo-natal state, which is limitless and driven by needs. Lacan notes that sometimes, when forced to acknowledge the corporeal nature of our existence, the real erupts, resulting in traumatic feelings. Similarly, Kristeva defines the abject as "that which disturbs identity;" 1 the abject does not respect borders-it exists in liminal spaces, confusing definitions and disrupting order. The abject causes a breakdown in meaning between two states which we respond to violently and physically in feelings of disgust and often fear. Examining the work of artists such as Margolles, Quinn, and Zurr, this essay will seek to analyse the ways in which use of human tissues can face us with the abject and the body of the real, as defined by philosophers Lacan and Kristeva.

The American Journal of Bioethics, 2007

Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2008

once resolutely anonymous and irrepressibly intimate. The person who was, is no more, his or her personality swiped away by death. And yet, as the physical parts are separated and studied in dissection, a personal history and life are revealed. See the healed fracture of the radius from a bicycle fall as a child, the scar where a necrotized scaphoid bone was removed from the hand. See the distended liver of the long-time drinker and the ruptured capillaries around the nose. The calloused hands speak of manual labor, the muscles of the wrist suggest carpenter. Because the cadavers were of a world whose traces were found within the body parts, the first great Lifeworks The body in the world

REINVENTING THE SELF

Once a resolute constructivist, new readings, new theories, new onto-epistemologies nudged me into an unfamiliar and frightening, yet familiar and generative, space during my first years on the tenure track. I found myself in an ambiguous and fluid space between the paradigms of interpretivist and deconstructionist posthuman and 'new' materialism theories, and turned to arts-based research to research-create and think-with new scholarship. This paper, artmaking, and video of my artmaking entangle and provide lines of flight through art-text encounters with what became three interconnected concepts that emerged in and, thus, guide this inquiry: bodies, prosthetics, and bleeding. These concepts emerged as generative entanglements of becoming different through artful doing. Inspired by the concept of rhizomatic assemblage, this work seeks to move through various openings, creating various slippages between bodies (of writing, of making, of images) to explore what artistic resea...