of doctors and maps - Snippet two

This may seem like a careless swipe at the volumes of critique of technology. And yet ... I need to know ...

Where am I with respect to technology? Represented in it? Protected from it? Accessing it? And is my doctor the knower who will use the instrument of technology to heal me?

 

Why then does he feel like an apologetic outsider, unnecessary to this process, merely the public relations man as I lie here, surrounded by the linear accelerator? Why do the women in the planning room, wired through their scans with the accelerator, smiling benevolently at him, seem more at home, more with me, within me?

Author

Asha Achuthan

My disciplinary training is in medicine. Some of my questions about science and politics led me to a Women's Studies programme in Jadavpur University, from where I did an M.Phil with a focus on "women and development". I have recently submitted my PhD dissertation, "Feminist Standpoint Theory and the Question of Experience". I am also working as Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, on a project of curriculum revision in the natural and social sciences.