Technological Care: Historical, conceptual and empirical issues of the interactions between technique(s) and care(s) in contemporary medicine
Du soin technologique : enjeux historiques, conceptuels et empiriques des modes d’intrication entre technique(s) et soin(s) dans la médecine contemporaine
Cahiers François Viète’s Thematic Issue
Volume thématique des Cahiers François Viète, vol. III, n°15
Published on Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Abstract
Les Cahiers François Viète lancent un appel à contribution pour le numéro intitulé « Du soin technologique : enjeux historiques, conceptuels et empiriques des modes d’intrication entre technique(s) et soin(s) dans la médecine contemporaine ».
Announcement
Argument
Since the 19th century in particular, medicine has been the scene of an unprecedented development of “scientification”, perfecting its methods and technicalising its practice. Physiology asserts itself in the face of anatomy and experimental methods are being developed. More precisely, the second half of the 19th century was characterised by a proliferation of animal preparations and complex instruments, associated with the growing role of physiology compared to other life’s approaches.This so-called scientific medicine is sometimes blamed for the sidelining of humans as subjects, especially when they are ill or suffering.
In the 1970s, the psychoanalyst Winnicott deplored that “Cure, in the sense of remedy, successful eradication of the disease and its cause, tends today to overlay cure as care”. In other words, by becoming more technical, medicine was certainly improving its diagnoses, its prognoses and its ability to provide a curative response to certain incurable diseases, but the price was high : an increasing impersonal and “objectifying” relationship with the patient, whose “subjective” voice, sufferings and expectations are no longer listened to.
This deep-rooted tension between “cure” and “care”, still persisting today, indicate an equally persistent contradiction between care and technique, which is not self-evident. The disarray that carers may feel, faced with new technologies, undoubtely exists. However, the risk of a pure and simple cleavage of “cure” and “care” —of medicine as a technique looking primarily for diagnostic, prognostic and curative efficiency (the “making of care” or “caring for a body”), and of medicine as attention to the vulnerability, suffering and subjective preferences of patients (the “caring for a being, a person”)— calls for a much more nuanced observation than that of Winnicott.
Indeed, the literature review is full of empirical studies showing that this cleavage does not really exist ; showing in any case, that new technologies are not as antinomic to the values of care as it might have seemed to Winnicott. From dialysis to the design of artificial cardiac valves, from the prediction of children’s epileptic seizures with algorithms to care robots and the manipulation of induced pluripotent stem cells ;these studies all challenge the false opposition between supposedly “cold” and inhuman technologies and supposedly “warm” and human care.In medicine as elsewhere, “how can we conceive of care that does not include technical invention ?” The “logic of care” is first and foremost to look, in context, for the best way to combine the heterogeneous elements that make up the care situation —which includes technologies.
This special issue aims to enrich the analysis of these complex relationships between technology and care, beyond any simplistic opposition. Particular attention will be given to the proposed contributions :
- which will be dedicated to specific case studies demonstrating several modes of entanglement (historical, conceptual, empirical) between care and technology.
- which put into dialogue scientific communities that are primarily concerned by these issues, but which are still largely unaware of each other. For example, the philosophy of techniques (which has not undertaken to theorise the relationship between care and technology) and the ethics of care, which generally do not pay attention to the fact that, in most cases, care is indissociable from the implementation of techniques.
- which focus on the (bio)medical device engineering community involved in designing medical technologies and producing relationships and care.
Submission guidelines
Contributions may be submitted in French or English. The call for papers will take place in three stages :
- Before 15 December 2021, send a draft document to the coordinating team (mathilde.lancelot@univ-nantes.fr and xavier.guchet@utc.fr). This text (.doc or .odt) should explain in 5,000 characters (including spaces) the content of the article, referring explicitly to the terms of this Call that have caught the attention of the authors. It will allow a pre-selection of articles by the Volume’s coordinating team. The authors will be informed of the admissibility of their proposal during January 2022.
- Before 1 June 2022, submission of accepted proposals to the coordinating team (between 30,000 and 50,000 characters, including spaces, but not including the list of references). Articles will be submitted for review by two referees according to the journal’s double-blind procedure. Authors are asked to follow the editorial guidelines of the Cahiers François Viète.
- After the expertise phase(s), final versions of the articles are due by 1 September 2023.
- Online and deposited with the printer : 1 November 2023.
Convenor
- Mathilde Lancelot (université de Nantes)
- Xavier Guchet (université de technologie de Compiègne)
Subjects
- History (Main category)
- Society > Science studies > History of science
Date(s)
- Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Attached files
Keywords
- médecine, soin, technologie
Contact(s)
- Mathilde Lancelot
courriel : mathilde [dot] lancelot [at] univ-nantes [dot] fr - Xavier Guchet
courriel : xavier [dot] guchet [at] utc [dot] fr
Reference Urls
Information source
- Sylvie Guionnet
courriel : recherches-en-education [at] univ-nantes [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Technological Care: Historical, conceptual and empirical issues of the interactions between technique(s) and care(s) in contemporary medicine », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, October 20, 2021, https://doi.org/10.58079/17fp
