The paper offers the concept of reversing the medical humanities. In agreement with the call from Kristeva et al to recognise the bidirectionality of the medical humanities, I propose moving beyond debates of attitude and aptitude in the application and engagement (either friendly or critical) of humanities to/in medicine, by considering a reversal of the directions of epistemic movement (a reversal of the flow of knowledge). I situate my proposal within existing articulations of the field found in the medical humanities meta-literature, pointing to a gap in the current terrain. I then develop the proposal by unfolding three reasons why we might gain something from exploring a reversed knowledge flow. First, a reversed knowledge flow seems to be an inherent—but still to be articulated—possibility in medical humanities and thus provides an opportunity for more knowledge. Second, the current unidirectionality of the field is founded on an inconsistency in the depiction of the connection between medicine and humanities, which risks creating the very divide that medical humanities set out to bridge. Practising a reversal may help avoid this divide. And third, a reversal might help rebalance the internal epistemic power, so as to motivate less external scepticism and in turn displace more external epistemic power towards medical humanities. I end the paper with a remark on precursors for a reversal, and ideas for where to go from here.

The article engages with medical practice to develop a philosophically informed understanding of epistemic engagement in medicine, and epistemic object relations more broadly. I take point of departure in the clinal encounter and draw on French psychoanalytical theory to develop and expand a taxonomy already proposed by Karin Knorr-Cetina. Doing so, I argue for the addition of an abject type object relation, that is, the encounter with objects that transgress frameworks and disrupt further investigation, hence preventing dynamic engagement and negatively shaping our epistemic pathways. The article is primarily theoretical although partly grounded in qualitative fieldwork.

Fat, in the context of dissection, is a nuisance, an obstruction to anatomical order and orientation. Yet it makes up a large part of the human body, and in the practice of dissection becomes one of the most prominent materials in the room, as it sticks to gloves and spreads through the dissection hall, making chairs greasy and instruments slippery. In this article I explore the role and significance of fat tissue in anatomical dissection for medical students. In anatomy, fat remains largely an excess material; something superfluous, insignificant, left-over when the body is turned into an anatomical body consisting of muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and bones, cleaned and displayable. But fat is also something which appears in experience as excessive, omnipresent, proliferating, and resistant to attempts to keep it in order. Much anthropological work within dissection practices has described the process of ‘cleaning’ the bodies, but often—mirroring medicine—these accounts follow the becoming of the anatomical body and leave the fat behind. In this article, I try to ‘stick with’ the fat and suggest that fat tissue, as an embodiment or material manifestation of the more-than-anatomical-body, may tell us something about bodies, subjectivity, scientific order, and dissection.

This article engages with medical practice to develop a philosophically informed understanding of epistemic engagement in medicine, and epistemic object relations more broadly. I take my point of departure in the clinical encounter and draw on French psychoanalytical theory to develop and expand a taxonomy already proposed by Karin Knorr-Cetina. In so doing, I argue for the addition of an abject-type object relation; that is, the encounter with objects that transgress frameworks and disrupt further investigation, hence preventing dynamic engagement and negatively shaping our epistemic pathways. This article is primarily theoretical, although partly grounded in qualitative fieldwork.

In this article I propose to reframe debates about ideals of emotion in medicine, abandoning the current binary setup of this debate as one between 'clinical detachment' and empathy. Inspired by observations from my own field work and drawing on Sky Gross' anthropological work on rituals of practice and Henri Lefebvre's notion of rhythm, I propose that the normative drive of clinical practice can be better understood through a notion of rhythmicity and attunement. Individual types of emotions in this framework are not, as such, appropriate or inappropriate, but are evaluated depending on their synchronicity with the specific rhythms of the concrete practice. To set up this proposal, the article shows how typical arguments about emotions in medicine -what I call emotion-entity focused frameworksare insufficient. I then draw on ethnographic observations from two orthopaedic departments and interviews with medical practitioners to show how clinical practice is driven by rhythmicity, shaped in this specific instance by a clinical aim of efficient, controlled intervention, and how clinicians continuously refer to this drive and flow of rhythms when evaluating inappropriate or problematic emotion. I argue that the use of a rhythm framework rather than ideals of detachment or empathy allows sensitivity to the complexity and situation-dependent elements of emotional ideals in clinical practice; and I end by proposing the term 'attuned concern' -which stresses the importance of regulation and adjustment to circumstances rather than of maintaining a constant distance/involvement -as a more fitting alternative to 'clinical detachment'. IntroductionThe ideal emotional stance of clinicians has been portrayed as 'detachment', that is, avoidance of emotion (see Halpern 2001, 15n1). Yet in the past 20 years, with a growing focus on patient perspectives and calls for medical practitioners to be more empathetic (e.g. Halpern 2001), this ideal has been criticised for compromising patient care, as well as obstructing doctor-patient relationships, and contributing to burnout among medical practitioners (e.g.