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The Mediated Breast: Technology, Agency, and Breast Cancer

The Mediated Breast: Technology, Agency, and Breast Cancer Women intimately interact with various medical technologies and prosthetic artifacts in the context of breast cancer. While extensive work has been done on the agency of technological artifacts and how they affect users’ perceptions and experiences, the agency of users is largely taken for granted hitherto. In this article, we explore the agency of four women who engage with breast cancer technologies and artifacts by analyzing their narrative accounts of such engagements. This empirical discussion is framed within the tradition of science and technology studies, philosophy of technological mediation and phenomenology of embodied agency as ‘I can/not’. This approach leads to the conclusions that women’s technologically mediated agencies range from being restricted to extended, take place on different bodily levels, within complex temporal structures, and are determined by certain socio-cultural contexts. Furthermore, it reveals that such agency shaping does not imply a one-way conditioning relationship between technologies and users, but rather involves a reciprocal relationship in which both subject and object are co-constituted. We therefore suggest that the ‘material turn’ in philosophy of technology also needs to take into account technologically mediated, material human beings in order to gain a better understanding of human existence. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Human Studies Springer Journals

The Mediated Breast: Technology, Agency, and Breast Cancer

Boer, Marjolein; Slatman, Jenny
Human Studies , Volume 41 (2) – Jan 8, 2018
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18 pages

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Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
Subject
Philosophy; Philosophy, general; Philosophy of the Social Sciences; Political Philosophy; Modern Philosophy; Sociolinguistics
ISSN
0163-8548
eISSN
1572-851X
DOI
10.1007/s10746-017-9445-5
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Women intimately interact with various medical technologies and prosthetic artifacts in the context of breast cancer. While extensive work has been done on the agency of technological artifacts and how they affect users’ perceptions and experiences, the agency of users is largely taken for granted hitherto. In this article, we explore the agency of four women who engage with breast cancer technologies and artifacts by analyzing their narrative accounts of such engagements. This empirical discussion is framed within the tradition of science and technology studies, philosophy of technological mediation and phenomenology of embodied agency as ‘I can/not’. This approach leads to the conclusions that women’s technologically mediated agencies range from being restricted to extended, take place on different bodily levels, within complex temporal structures, and are determined by certain socio-cultural contexts. Furthermore, it reveals that such agency shaping does not imply a one-way conditioning relationship between technologies and users, but rather involves a reciprocal relationship in which both subject and object are co-constituted. We therefore suggest that the ‘material turn’ in philosophy of technology also needs to take into account technologically mediated, material human beings in order to gain a better understanding of human existence.

Journal

Human Studies – Springer Journals

Published: Jan 8, 2018

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