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The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging

by Jose Van Dijck
University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 2005
208 pp., 20 illus. Paper, $24.95
ISBN: 0-295-98490-2.

Reviewed by Jan Baetens
KU Leuven, Fac. of Arts, Blijde Inkomst 21, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium

jan.baetens@arts.kuleuven.ac.be

In the endlessly growing field of studies on the representation of the body, Jose Van Dijck’s book on medical imaging should be welcomed for more than one reason. Written from the triple background of literary studies, cultural studies, and science studies (more specifically the SCOT or social construction of technology-approach), The Transparent Body offers in a sense the best of both worlds: on the one hand a series of seducing and astute close readings of very concrete and highly diverse cultural artefacts such as Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, the classic science fiction film The Fantastic Voyage, or the plastinated cadavers of the touring exhibition Bodyworlds, and on the other hand an over-all theory of the way medical imaging techniques such as X rays, endoscopy, or ultrasound imaging of foetuses interact with cultural interpretations and reuses of these techniques outside the medical world.

In seven concise and well-illustrated chapters, Jose Van Dijck accomplishes the tour de force, first, to introduce her readers to the (pre)history of the most currently applied technical of medical imaging and their social representations; second, to explain their main issues and stakes on a technical as well as on an ethical and ideological level; third, to relate these techniques to a broad set of cultural longing, hopes, fears, (mis)understandings, and reconstructions. Following the basic claims of the SCOT-approach, which already informed her two previous books (Imagenation: Popular Genetics and Manufacturing Babies and Public Consent: Debating the New Reproductive Technologies), Van Dijck demonstrates the dialectical relationship of society and technology, each of them constructing, misconstructing, and reconstructing each other.

The major qualities of this book are rooted first of all in its acute awareness of the very historicity of representation. If The Transparent Body is much more than a work of cultural studies, it is not only because it exhibits through a thorough knowledge of the technologies involved in medical imaging, but also because of the attention paid to the historical frameworks that surround the invention and the use of specific techniques. The Transparent Body is, hence, also a media history of medical imaging, and the reader can only feel grateful for the clarity of the author’s journey through modern Western representational techniques inside and outside medicine.

In order to avoid information overkill as well as the temptation of overwhelming generalizations, Van Dijck has rightly decided not to propose one single history, however. Each chapter focuses neatly on one specific medical imaging technique, following a simple but very efficient triadic scheme: a historical introduction, a close reading of a particularly well-chosen case study, a political reflection on the contemporary cultural interpretations and implications of the given technique. Although not necessarily presented in this order, this schema provides the reader with an exemplarily didactic framework that does never prevent the author from giving many original insights on the phenomena studied.

The real pleasure the reader takes from this book is yet not only intellectual. It should be stressed that Van Dijck’s style has a kind of elegance that has become too rare in current scholarship. The Transparent Body displays from its very first to its very last sentence a real sense of rhythm, of wit, of rhetorical devices, a perfect balance of theory and anecdote, a sound feeling of how to dispatch information without ever giving the impression of being too slow or too fast, and finally a strong moral and political commitment (yes, this is style too!).

Together with the wonderfully rich range of objects treated, all these qualities make The Transparent Body a fascinating book for all readers eager to learn about a crucial aspect of their daily life and the technological culture that is impregnating their body.

 

 

 




Updated 1st May 2005


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