If you need an accessible version of this item please contact JSTOR User Support
Imaging the Human Body: Quasi Objects, Quasi Texts, and the Theater of Proof
T. Hugh Crawford
PMLA
Vol. 111, No. 1, Special Topic: The Status of Evidence (Jan., 1996), pp. 66-79
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463134
Page Count: 14
If you need an accessible version of this item please contact JSTOR User Support
Abstract
In the field of medical imaging, theory, technique, and rhetoric converge to produce knowledge. Historical taboo and cultural belief in the fragility of life have protected the interior of the human body from the scientist's prying eyes; nevertheless, in the modern period (since about 1540), the production of medical knowledge has depended on the unveiling of physical detail. Recent work in the sociology of science-notably Bruno Latour's concept of the theater of proof-has questioned this epistemology. Latour argues that scientific knowledge can be produced by superimposing data that create an effect of reality. To illuminate traditional strategies for constructing convincing accounts of hidden biological processes, I examine texts by Andreas Vesalius, William Beaumont, and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. I then discuss an advertisement for a contemporary medical-imaging device that, by foregrounding the superimposition of diagnostic data, provides a useful counterexample to the constructed objectivity of the earlier texts.
Page Thumbnails
-
66
-
67
-
68
-
69
-
70
-
71
-
72
-
73
-
74
-
75
-
76
-
77
-
78
-
79
PMLA © 1996 Modern Language Association