Medical (Ersatz) Liturgies of Death: Anatomical Dissection and Organ Donation as Biopolitical Practices
Kimbell Kornu, M.D., Instructor, Saint Louis University
Liturgy has enjoyed a resurgence in political theology. Liturgy as a political concept derives from the classical Greek leitourgia, meaning “public service” which designates the obligation the city imposes on its citizens to provide services for the common interest. As a public service, modern medicine wields power over life and death through the common practices of anatomical dissection and organ donation. Drawing on the recent work of James K. A. Smith and Giorgio Agamben, this paper argues that these common medical practices are liturgies of death with pedagogical and biopolitical force.
In the Cultural Liturgies series, Smith develops the notion of secular liturgy, based on what he calls a “liturgical anthropology.” He argues that humans are fundamentally desiring, imagining animals, formed by practices and embodied through habits. Smith defines liturgy as rituals of ultimate concern that are identity-forming and telos-laden. In this way, liturgies can either be secular or religious and are pedagogical in nature.
In the Homo Sacer series, Giorgio Agamben has recently taken a theological turn by focusing on how Christian theology has shaped modernity in government, economy, and ethics. Agamben makes the novel argument that Christian liturgy in the Eucharist, based on the mechanism of ex opere operato, provides the paradigm for modern effectiveness and Kantian duty, such that actions are effective regardless of the virtue of the actor.
By synthesizing these seemingly discordant conceptions of liturgy by Smith and Agamben and drawing on historical and phenomenological perspectives, this paper argues that these medical practices are paradigmatic ersatz (that is, false and artificial) liturgies of pedagogical and political formation, as parodies of the Eucharist. Anatomical dissection is a pedagogical liturgy of death because it helps form the identity of physicians-in-training through the embodied practice of what is called an “anatomical rationality.” Truth is revealed through the breaking and cutting of a dead body. Organ donation is a biopolitical liturgy of death as a public service of life “given for you” that requires the (brain) death of another. Organ transplantation becomes an immanent, salvific act independent of the virtue of physicians, who become the new priests of the biopolitical order.
Liturgy has enjoyed a resurgence in political theology. Liturgy as a political concept derives from the classical Greek leitourgia, meaning “public service” which designates the obligation the city imposes on its citizens to provide services for the common interest. As a public service, modern medicine wields power over life and death through the common practices of anatomical dissection and organ donation. Drawing on the recent work of James K. A. Smith and Giorgio Agamben, this paper argues that these common medical practices are liturgies of death with pedagogical and biopolitical force.
In the Cultural Liturgies series, Smith develops the notion of secular liturgy, based on what he calls a “liturgical anthropology.” He argues that humans are fundamentally desiring, imagining animals, formed by practices and embodied through habits. Smith defines liturgy as rituals of ultimate concern that are identity-forming and telos-laden. In this way, liturgies can either be secular or religious and are pedagogical in nature.
In the Homo Sacer series, Giorgio Agamben has recently taken a theological turn by focusing on how Christian theology has shaped modernity in government, economy, and ethics. Agamben makes the novel argument that Christian liturgy in the Eucharist, based on the mechanism of ex opere operato, provides the paradigm for modern effectiveness and Kantian duty, such that actions are effective regardless of the virtue of the actor.
By synthesizing these seemingly discordant conceptions of liturgy by Smith and Agamben and drawing on historical and phenomenological perspectives, this paper argues that these medical practices are paradigmatic ersatz (that is, false and artificial) liturgies of pedagogical and political formation, as parodies of the Eucharist. Anatomical dissection is a pedagogical liturgy of death because it helps form the identity of physicians-in-training through the embodied practice of what is called an “anatomical rationality.” Truth is revealed through the breaking and cutting of a dead body. Organ donation is a biopolitical liturgy of death as a public service of life “given for you” that requires the (brain) death of another. Organ transplantation becomes an immanent, salvific act independent of the virtue of physicians, who become the new priests of the biopolitical order.