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This is not the first time in the history of medicine that bodily understandings have oscillated between being enclosed and open. These shifts, however, have not only been driven by scientific progress or technological developments, but also by shifting political or societal contexts.
– What is the 21st century body if not endlessly open, changeable, and porous? Ketil Slagstad ask in his review of Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers book “The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War”.
– The originality of Geroulanos and Meyers’ work lies in pointing out how the unconsciousness, physiological regulation of the body, and the continuous possibility of its collapse, enabled individuality. They further demonstrate how the political and the medical became intertwined in the early 20th century, Slagstad writes.
Read the full review here.