Messy entanglements: research assemblages in heart transplantation discourses and practicesShow others and affiliations
2018 (English)In: Medical Humanities, ISSN 1468-215X, E-ISSN 1473-4265, Vol. 44, no 1, p. 46-54Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
The paper engages with a variety of data around a supposedly single biomedical event, that of heart transplantation. In conventional discourse, organ transplantation constitutes an unproblematised form of spare part surgery in which failing biological components are replaced by more efficient and enduring ones, but once that simple picture is complicated by employing a radically interdisciplinary approach, any biomedical certainty is profoundly disrupted. Our aim, as a cross-sectorial partnership, has been to explore the complexities of heart transplantation by explicitly entangling research from the arts, biosciences and humanities without privileging any one discourse. It has been no easy enterprise yet it has been highly productive of new insights. We draw on our own ongoing funded research with both heart donor families and recipients to explore our different perceptions of what constitutes data and to demonstrate how the dynamic entangling of multiple data produces a constitutive assemblage of elements in which no one can claim priority. Our claim is that the use of such research assemblages and the collaborations that we bring to our project breaks through disciplinary silos to enable a fuller comprehension of the significance and experience of heart transplantation in both theory and practice.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
BMJ PUBLISHING GROUP , 2018. Vol. 44, no 1, p. 46-54
Keywords [en]
art; cardiology; philosophy; social science
National Category
Other Medical Biotechnology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-147423DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2017-011212ISI: 000428924000009PubMedID: 28972037OAI: oai:DiVA.org:liu-147423DiVA, id: diva2:1206592
Note
Funding Agencies|British Council/Arts Council England-Artists International Development Fund; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada); Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec (Canada); Concordia University (Canada)
2018-05-172018-05-172018-05-17