Learning to think-with: Feminist Epistemology and the Practice-based Medical Humanities

• Main Author: Jo Winning
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lectito Journals 2018-09-01
• Series: Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics
• Subjects: clinical practice; feminist epistemology; practice-based medical humanities
• Online Access: http://www.lectitopublishing.nl/download/learning-to-think-with-feminist-epistemology-and-the-practice-based-medical-humanities-3888.pdf

This paper begins at the place of practice, immersed in the messy real-life clinical setting, with the tensions, errors and affects that suffuse healthcare and its delivery, using the recent case of Hadiza Bawa-Garba’s conviction for manslaughter and lifetime ban from the medical profession, after the death of Jack Adcock, a 6-year-old boy in her care, in 2011. From a feminist perspective, the vocabulary missing from this ‘watershed’ case in the UK is that the gendered, classed and raced subjectivities of the clinician, patient and family are caught up in this tragic set of events. Such examples from clinical practice may seem a long way from the conceptual fields of medical humanities. This paper argues that they are not. It proposes that we require a new methodology of the practice-based medical humanities which deploys socio-political, cultural and conceptual frameworks to expand the capacities of clinical training and practice. Practice-based medical humanities require an underpinning by feminist epistemology. Using Haraway’s ‘sym-poesis’ and Despret’s ‘thinking-with’ as models of thinking offers radical potential for reconceptualising the lived experiences of clinical practice and patient care. Such principles allow the full complexities of identity to emerge within the clinical setting.