Dissecting Surgery: Forms of Life Depersonalized

Abstract

When surgeons drape human bodies in green or blue cloths, when they erect a barrier between their eyes and the patient's face, when they narrow their gaze to that small portion of the body into which the scalpel is to penetrate, when they surround their activities with antiseptic walls, what are they doing? Are they `objectifying' and `depersonalizing' the body? How might one tell? What method might one use to find out? What might such a claim mean? This paper explores these methodological and philosophical issues, comparing surgery and other assaults on the body in a variety of contexts. The conclusion is that existing treatments of the problem fail to understand the surgeon's world as routine. Much of the drama and ritual that analysts read into the operating theatre results from transference of the naive observer's viewpoint to the world of the surgeon.