Nos organes, nous-mêmes ? La relation corps-personne au prisme de la transplantation d’organes

Abstract

In the 1970s, the drive to use the organs of the living and then of the dead for therapeutic purposes immediately sparked the interest of researchers in the humanities and social sciences, particularly in North America. Behind the enchanting stories told by doctors and surgeons, they wanted to identify the consequences of this medical technology at the individual and collective, intimate and political levels. To what extent does transplant medicine affect the conception of death and the relationship to the body of the deceased for society as a whole? What are the concrete implications – psychological and material – for the existence of individuals affected in their flesh by this practice? Anthropologists, sociologists and historians have carried out large-scale surveys based on ethnographic methods and long-term investment with surgeons, organ recipients, living donors and relatives of deceased donors. Based on a selection of their work, I will shed light on the contributions of this field of research and the tensions that run through it.

Keywords

• ethnography
• body
• personhood
• organ transplant