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  • Article for Textual Practice

    Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Textual Practice on 23/08/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0950236X.2017.1365757

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The ante-tempus novel: prevention and patienthood in recent speculative fiction

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/07/2019
<mark>Journal</mark>Textual Practice
Issue number6
Volume33
Number of pages21
Pages (from-to)983-1003
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date23/08/17
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This article introduces a new medical subjectivity generated by the drive towards prevention that increasingly organises the discourses and practices of medicine, as well as war, state security and economy. The ante-tempus patient is the subjectivity emerging at a moment in time in which medical advances and interventions are shaping the present according to future needs, in order to face anticipated threats to human health. Contemporary science fiction offers a fertile ground for investigating this, as well as the resulting anxieties about mass-medicalisation. The first part of the article explores the concept of preventative mass-medicalisation and the exploitation and harvesting of ‘health’ in neoliberal societies. In the second part, the speculative novel The Unit [Ninni Holmqvist, trans. Marlaine Delargy (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, [2006] 2010)] exemplifies and contextualises the key features of ante-tempus patienthood. This medical subjectivity embodied by the novel’s main characters represents the outcome of the attempt to create a medical utopia. In this society of medical management, biological exploitation, forced medicalisation and self-sacrifice merge with neoliberal ideology, casting the discourse of preventative medicine in dystopian terms.

Bibliographic note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Textual Practice on 23/08/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0950236X.2017.1365757