Visual Media, Mobilization, and (the Absence of) Race in Popular Representations of Medicine

• In Event: Media Studies Interruptions of STS - II

Abstract

In “Visualization and Cognition,” Latour argues that, when studying inscriptions, “it is not perception which is at stake” but “the main problem to solve is that of mobilization”—a word that connotes movement as well as the ability to “win over new…allies” (6-7). From this perspective, publicly circulating inscriptions like fMRI brain scans mobilize scientific knowledge outside of expert communities and, when used as rhetorical tools, mobilize audiences to support biomedical action. In this presentation, I explore this dual sense of mobilization using the documentary film Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope, in which researchers, physicians, social workers, and educators present childhood trauma as an urgent public health crisis. Following scholars like Lisa Cartwright and José van Dijck, I bridge STS and media studies frameworks to explain how Resilience incorporates scientific images--especially medical body scans--as symbols of “the objective authority of science and technology” to increase the persuasiveness of its arguments (Burri and Dumit 2008). With media studies’ tools for analyzing visual media and popular circulation, STS can expand its understanding of scientific artifacts appearing in non-expert communities. Furthermore, a focus on culturally situated persuasion, drawing on media studies and rhetorical theory, also allows for myriad connections between STS and fields like Critical Race Theory and Disability Studies; in this case, I argue that the medical images in Resilience emphasize a “universal” body that obscures recognition of racial discrimination as a source of trauma (e.g. the social epidemiology of Nancy Krieger).

Author

• Drew Holladay, University of Maryland, Baltimore County