Our Bodies in the Hospital and the Hospital’s Bodies
Joshua Daniel, PhD, St. Xavier University
My presentation extends a theological conception of the body into the medical realm, in order to deepen our account of how medical treatment affects our embodied lives. Specifically, I articulate how theologian Robert Jenson’s conception of bodies as ‘availabilities that enable freedom’ helps us better understand the personal unease that attends hospital care and suggests how physicians might relate to their patients more personally.
Jenson’s conception of bodies as ‘availabilities that enable freedom’ is meant to explain what the Christian traditions means by referring to the Church and the Eucharistic elements as the ‘body of Christ’: they are those objects in the world through which Christ is available to us, and so by which we can respond to Christ freely. This theological conception of bodies can be extended to the personal aspect of human embodied life. To say that human persons lead embodied lives is not only to say that our personhood is inextricable from our bodies, but also that we embody our personal lives in objects that render our lives available to others, enabling them to respond freely. That is, human embodied life includes the activity of communicating our personal lives through objects that make us vulnerable to others—and these objects are inextricable from our physical bodies. Love letters and homes, for instance, are not simply brute objects, nor merely personally expressive; rather, they are objects that facilitate embodied personal intimacy with others—hence, we often treat them with the same care we give to the bodies of their creators.
Given this conception of bodies, we can understand the personal unease that attends hospital care to involve not simply the ‘medical objectification’ of our irreducibly personal physical bodies, but also the production of medical bodies for our persons that do not easily facilitate—and often seem to hinder—personal interactions with hospital caregivers. Medical charts, x-rays, blood test, etc. are so many bodies that make us available to healthcare professionals, enabling them to treat us more freely; yet, what these embody of us are not the kind of communications that best contribute to our personally significant lives, but rather the kind that shape mechanical relations. This is abetted by how these bodies are treated: they are handled as mere objects rather than personal presences; and as ‘professional documents,’ they are kept out of the hands of those persons whom they embody. All of this conspires to make hospital patients feel that their personal lives are at the complete mercy of impersonal choreographies.
I offer two suggestions for rectifying this. First, physicians can treat the medical bodies produced within hospitals as personal presences rather than professional documents. They can be handled with care and ceremony, rather than efficiency, when interacting with patients, as a form of personal respect. Second, physicians can even leave these medical bodies ‘behind the scenes’ when interacting with patients, so that they do not interfere with, and risk de-personalizing, physician-patient encounters. Though apparently trivial, these enable the physician to concretely acknowledge that medical care affects personal embodied lives.
My presentation extends a theological conception of the body into the medical realm, in order to deepen our account of how medical treatment affects our embodied lives. Specifically, I articulate how theologian Robert Jenson’s conception of bodies as ‘availabilities that enable freedom’ helps us better understand the personal unease that attends hospital care and suggests how physicians might relate to their patients more personally.
Jenson’s conception of bodies as ‘availabilities that enable freedom’ is meant to explain what the Christian traditions means by referring to the Church and the Eucharistic elements as the ‘body of Christ’: they are those objects in the world through which Christ is available to us, and so by which we can respond to Christ freely. This theological conception of bodies can be extended to the personal aspect of human embodied life. To say that human persons lead embodied lives is not only to say that our personhood is inextricable from our bodies, but also that we embody our personal lives in objects that render our lives available to others, enabling them to respond freely. That is, human embodied life includes the activity of communicating our personal lives through objects that make us vulnerable to others—and these objects are inextricable from our physical bodies. Love letters and homes, for instance, are not simply brute objects, nor merely personally expressive; rather, they are objects that facilitate embodied personal intimacy with others—hence, we often treat them with the same care we give to the bodies of their creators.
Given this conception of bodies, we can understand the personal unease that attends hospital care to involve not simply the ‘medical objectification’ of our irreducibly personal physical bodies, but also the production of medical bodies for our persons that do not easily facilitate—and often seem to hinder—personal interactions with hospital caregivers. Medical charts, x-rays, blood test, etc. are so many bodies that make us available to healthcare professionals, enabling them to treat us more freely; yet, what these embody of us are not the kind of communications that best contribute to our personally significant lives, but rather the kind that shape mechanical relations. This is abetted by how these bodies are treated: they are handled as mere objects rather than personal presences; and as ‘professional documents,’ they are kept out of the hands of those persons whom they embody. All of this conspires to make hospital patients feel that their personal lives are at the complete mercy of impersonal choreographies.
I offer two suggestions for rectifying this. First, physicians can treat the medical bodies produced within hospitals as personal presences rather than professional documents. They can be handled with care and ceremony, rather than efficiency, when interacting with patients, as a form of personal respect. Second, physicians can even leave these medical bodies ‘behind the scenes’ when interacting with patients, so that they do not interfere with, and risk de-personalizing, physician-patient encounters. Though apparently trivial, these enable the physician to concretely acknowledge that medical care affects personal embodied lives.