Kritik i dag

This article examines contemporary American medical television dramas and their intersections with 19th century literary realism asking how technical language and sentimental speech are connected in these cultural representations of illness and medical discourse. I argue that they share a common effort of medical realism: Questions of medical knowledge, diagnosis and the delimitations of the normal and the pathological not only inform the thematic content of these genres, but also mark the narrative techniques of description, characterization and imagery. Because the rational professionalism, since the founding of modern medical science, carries with it a specific truth privilege, it presents itself not only as the possibility for medical treatment, but also as an answer to our existential troubles. I consider this double authority of medical practice and social therapy a model for the medical realism at play in modern hospital dramas. They borrow the scientific authority of medicine in order to present characters who are first and foremost bodies and who are therefore potentially pathological. Furthermore they borrow the interpretive authority of medicine to develop a diagnostics, which can determine the normal and the pathological on a social scale.

Dette nummer af K&K handler om (u)sunde kroppe. Krop og sundhed er i det senmoderne blevet temaer, der optager stadig større dele af befolkningen, og som i saerlig grad antager politisk betydning. Blogs og V-logs om traening og ernaering, ugentlige detoxkure og selvrealisering gennem motion er blevet hverdag for mange. Fra vuggestuernes udvidede sukkerpolitik til virksomhedernes krav om og monitorering af medarbejdernes helbredstilstand, er vi blevet vant til at blive konfronteret med kravet om konstant optimering af kroppen, både aestetisk og i forhold til en given produktivitet. Tv-programmer og kampagner opfordrer os til at "taelle vores aeg" og holde styr på den "reproduktive alder"; kropsidealer dyrkes og efterstraebes som et saerligt moralkodeks, og kollegaens madpakke scannes for derigennem at afkode en sandhed om individet: Spiser hun kulhydrater, igen! 'Den sunde krop' er blevet en magtmekanisme, gennem hvilken befolkningsgrupper kan opdeles: de sunde og de usunde, de produktive og de uproduktive, de vaerdige og de uvaerdige. Kategorierne tages ofte for givet som ikke-politiske, private forhold, som det enkelte individ baerer ansvaret for, og ikke sjaeldent ser vi eksempler på "sundheds-shaming". Et tilbagevendende eksempel er placeringen af det økonomiske ansvar i 10 Kultur & Klasse * 120 * 2015 (u)sunde Kroppe

No abstract

This article examines how utopian and ecological thinking connect in light of the ongoing eco-catastrophe. While the dystopic genre might be timely as it depicts an affective landscape of fear and hopelessness and communicates ideas about how things can get much worse, the article suggests that utopian imagination is necessary but only possible if it connects with an existing ecology. It presents three utopian perspectives on the entanglements of reproduction and ecological sustainability –Inger Christensen’s circular energy, Donna Haraway’s non-reproduction, and Hiromi Ito’s radical kinship – that link utopian imagination, feminist temporalities and questions of sustainability. The focus on birth, childhood and kinship illustrates how biology, social practices and phantasms affect one another and how ecology brings these levels together, while connecting intimate questions and global problematics. The analyzed texts articulate instances of “utopian kinship” that sidestep the mechanisms of reproductive futurism or reproduction understood as a confirmation and continuation of the way things are. As such, they point to the reproductive sphere as a place for resistance: queer growth, multispecies kinship, nature’s work against capitalism’s principles of development.