Abstract
What were to happen if we were to unravel the concept of ‘medicine’ – and with that, writing? And with that, philosophy? In ‘On Medicine’, Kélina Gotman journeys through philosophical concepts of medicine and health, to see where these meet – in Michel Foucault’s terms – the ancient notions of ‘care’. ‘Care of the self’, like ‘truthful’ or ‘fearless speech’, implicated intimately in practices of critique, become devices for rethinking politics and aesthetics – performative entanglements that embroil bodies into histories and histories into ecologies. Unpeeling layer after layer of discursive mythologies – the structuring systems that enable us to see (or believe we see) ‘health’ as distinct from ‘medicine’, ‘science’ as distinct from ‘art’, ‘religion’ as distinct from ‘philosophy’ and more – this performative essay shifts the gaze towards an ethics of research that refuses to parse, or else parses other ways, revealing other geographies and anatomies – other forms of knowing. An-archaeologically, this method offers a way to see ‘performance’ not so much as layered on top of histories of theatre, embodied being, or what have you; but as an epistemic mode that zigzags – refusing the failures of closure.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 118-126 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | PERFORMANCE RESEARCH |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 4-5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 29 Oct 2018 |
Keywords
- history of medicine
- philosophy of medicine
- performance
- Michel Foucault
- care
- writing