Material Translation and Exclusion: Barad's Entanglement in Post-pandemic Medical Humanities

Description

Translation and Exclusion: Entanglements in Medical Humanities
Monika Class, Lund University, Sweden

It was common knowledge before that ecology and health are inseparable, but the pandemic has revealed the urgent need to “ecologise” the Medical Humanities. The present article is concerned with the question to what extent the Medical Humanities have a certain pre-pandemic record of ecologising the field. Building on the manifesto of the Critical Medical Humanities in the mid 2010s, the paper traces the manner in which Karen Barad’s theory of entanglement represents a continuity within the Medical Humanities to gauge the health and environmental crisis from a materialist feminist perspective. Considering previous critiques and endorsements of Barad’s translation of quantum mechanics into posthuman agency, I propose that her naturalisation of epistemology and ethics promises to be a fruitful approach not only to eschew disciplinary silos and human exceptionalism but also to analyse current, post-pandemic developments in the field of medical humanities.

Period	2023 Sept 6
Held at	University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International