Systems Medicine and the War on Cancer: A New Materialist Analysis
Systems Medicine and the War on Cancer: A New Materialist Analysis

Summary/Abstract: I will argue that the vision of the body that contemporary cancer research maintains,which highlights bodily dynamism, complexity, and emergence, is consistent with the new materialist approach to material ontology. However, keeping in mind the new materialist demand on considering knowledge production as material-discursive,I argue that the metaphor of war against cancer, which is still prevalent when talking about cancer research, has a danger of reducing the complexity of this account. By offering a reading on how the war metaphor could be considered as anthropocentric,I will argue that this metaphor does not do justice to the systems biology approach and contemporary cancer treatments. I will suggest, instead, that challenging this metaphor might open up new ways to envision contemporary cancer research.

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