Zrzucając maski. Refleksje na temat podmiotowości w świetle procesów (bio)medykalizacji
Masks Off. Reflections on Subjectivity from the Perspective of the (Bio)medicalization Processes

Summary/Abstract: The paper deploys conceptualizations and theories typical of cultural studies in order to discuss mechanisms orchestrating the formation of human subjectivity from a perspective of (bio)medicalization processes (Peter Conrad, Adele E. Clarke); that is, modernization tendencies aiming to subordinate social practices to medical jurisdiction. In this methodological context, the article is also an interdisciplinary research project which gestures towards a conceptualization of human subjectivity in which considerations referring to the dichotomy of agency and structure (Anthony Giddens, Piotr Sztompka) are supplemented by the factor of human corporality. The opportunity to subsume biological and biomedical issues within cultural studies without the risk of biological reductionism is the result of providing a theory of subjectivity that involves its probabilistic character. The notion of probabilistic subjectivity is a theoretical construct whose significance for cultural theories springs from the development of genetics and molecular biology and their contribution to processes of biomedicalization.

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