of doctors and maps - Snippet one
The clinic is not what it was. It is highly technologized, flooded with information systems. But what of the relationships it traditionally supported, between patient and doctor?
She was in the eye of technology. Cocooned in the simulator. Surrounded by the linear accelerator.
While each act of swallowing became more conscious, more painful, each act of devising mathemes became more precise, more focal.
Yes, this is mathematicized medicine. This is where she was, while re-writing technology, mathematicization, mapping. Not ‘under’ the ‘gaze’ as she understood it.
She was one with the simulator.
The doctor did not even figure; the 'godhead', the 'male knower', the butt of criticism, had become irrelevant, an anachronism.
Now what in the world does that mean?
Author
Asha Achuthan
My disciplinary training is in medicine. Some of my questions about science and politics led me to a Women's Studies programme in Jadavpur University, from where I did an M.Phil with a focus on "women and development". I have recently submitted my PhD dissertation, "Feminist Standpoint Theory and the Question of Experience". I am also working as Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, on a project of curriculum revision in the natural and social sciences.
