{"id":{"repo_id":"uwo","oai_identifier":"oai:uwo.scholaris.ca:20.500.14721/29532"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uwo/oai:uwo.scholaris.ca:20.500.14721/29532","repository":{"repo_id":"uwo","name":"Western University","base_url":"https://uwo.scholaris.ca/server/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Critical Interventions in the Medical Humanities","abstract":"This thesis makes three novel critical theoretical interventions in the medical humanities. The first uses Benjamin’s critical theory of art in the age of its technological reproducibility to reveal that the evidence-based biomedical model’s primary function is not to cure patients, but to prescribe politics. The technological reproducibility of evidence-based biomedicine transforms medicine so it can no longer perceive—or encounter—patients as unique, whole, and above all situated beings. The second intervention uses Sara Ahmed’s feminist phenomenology to theorize ethical encounters between medicine and its “others”—patients and literature—in such a way that particularizes the encounter, not the other itself. This theoretical maneuver re-accounts for unique, situated patients without essentializing them. The third intervention proposes a medical inhumanities that recognizes what conditions produce inhumanity in medicine’s encounters with others, like the encounter between a mentally ill refugee and evidence-based biomedicine in Rawi Hage’s novel Cockroach.","abstract_html":"This thesis makes three novel critical theoretical interventions in the medical humanities. The first uses Benjamin’s critical theory of art in the age of its technological reproducibility to reveal that the evidence-based biomedical model’s primary function is not to cure patients, but to prescribe politics. The technological reproducibility of evidence-based biomedicine transforms medicine so it can no longer perceive—or encounter—patients as unique, whole, and above all situated beings. The second intervention uses Sara Ahmed’s feminist phenomenology to theorize ethical encounters between medicine and its “others”—patients and literature—in such a way that particularizes the encounter, not the other itself. This theoretical maneuver re-accounts for unique, situated patients without essentializing them. The third intervention proposes a medical inhumanities that recognizes what conditions produce inhumanity in medicine’s encounters with others, like the encounter between a mentally ill refugee and evidence-based biomedicine in Rawi Hage’s novel Cockroach.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Golafshani, Maryam"],"institution":"The University of Western Ontario","degree_name":"MA","degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":"Theory and Criticism","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Faflak, Joel R."],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2019,"date_issued":"2019-06-28","date_published":"2019-06-28","updated_at":"2026-07-27T21:55:59Z","subjects":["medical humanities","health humanities","medical philosophy","critical theory","phenomenology"],"languages":["en_ca"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/29532","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.uri"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Faflak, Joel R."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Golafshani, Maryam"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.accessioned","label":"Dc Date Accessioned","values":["2025-07-10T18:32:18Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2025-07-10T18:32:18Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.issued","label":"Date","values":["2019-06-28"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["The University of Western Ontario"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Theory and Criticism"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["MA"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["medical humanities","health humanities","medical philosophy","critical theory","phenomenology"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language.iso","label":"Language (ISO)","values":["en_ca"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.uri","label":"Identifier URI","values":["https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/29532"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["The thesis cover page in the PDF document includes references to Western University’s previous institutional repository platform, known as Scholarship@Western, and links to that platform (beginning with ir.lib.uwo.ca). In citing or referring to this thesis, use the DOI or handle from this page instead. Sample citation: Author name, \"Thesis title.\" (Year). Western University Open Repository. https://doi.org/10.71858/123456."]},{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["This thesis makes three novel critical theoretical interventions in the medical humanities. The first uses Benjamin’s critical theory of art in the age of its technological reproducibility to reveal that the evidence-based biomedical model’s primary function is not to cure patients, but to prescribe politics. The technological reproducibility of evidence-based biomedicine transforms medicine so it can no longer perceive—or encounter—patients as unique, whole, and above all situated beings. The second intervention uses Sara Ahmed’s feminist phenomenology to theorize ethical encounters between medicine and its “others”—patients and literature—in such a way that particularizes the encounter, not the other itself. This theoretical maneuver re-accounts for unique, situated patients without essentializing them. The third intervention proposes a medical inhumanities that recognizes what conditions produce inhumanity in medicine’s encounters with others, like the encounter between a mentally ill refugee and evidence-based biomedicine in Rawi Hage’s novel Cockroach."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Critical Interventions in the Medical Humanities"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor.advisor":["Faflak, Joel R."],"dc:creator":["Golafshani, Maryam"],"dc:date.accessioned":["2025-07-10T18:32:18Z"],"dc:date.available":["2025-07-10T18:32:18Z"],"dc:date.issued":["2019-06-28"],"dc:description":["The thesis cover page in the PDF document includes references to Western University’s previous institutional repository platform, known as Scholarship@Western, and links to that platform (beginning with ir.lib.uwo.ca). 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