Unconventional Bodies: Diversity, Kinship, and Medical Illustration

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Abstract

The diverse practices that collectively make up the field of biomedical illustration are enacted at the intersections of research, clinical practice, and education of both practitioners and patients. Drawing on archival materials, interviews, and participant observation in three North American graduate programs in biomedical illustration, this paper explores the creation of biomedical visual communications as a social-material process constrained not only by the capacities of rendering technologies but also by the social, political, and economic arrangements of biomedical practice.

Numerous scholars have examined the role of biomedical images in constructing and upholding social and political categories of embodiment, with material effects on the clinical and social experiences of raced, gendered, and disabled bodies. Much of this work focuses on these images as artifacts, eliding the human actors responsible for their creation. In contrast, my research focuses on the training and professionalization of medical illustrators as skilled producers of biomedical knowledge. As a small and poorly understood field, the practice of biomedical visual communications reflects tensions between the conventional biomedical epistemologies according to which professional authority is allotted and the synthetic epistemologies that enable representation. The credibility of any given visual product rests on the illustrator’s ability to balance recognizable visual and social conventions with innovative and inclusive representational practices. Through key moments in my research, I examine biomedical visualizations as social-material by-products of the same epistemic labour and boundary work that characterize other biomedical specialties.

Author

• Drew Danielle Belsky, STS Program, York University