ESTE É O CORPO QUE AS MÁQUINAS ME DÃO”: hemodiálise e (re) conceptualização do corpo

Abstract

This research aims to understand how hemodialysis, as a biomedical technology, relates to the lived experience processes of people living with chronic kidney disease. This article was built on the assumption that biomedical technologies produce discourses and subjectivities. The research was conducted using qualitative methodology and ethnographic method based on observation in the hospital and ethnographic interviews. This method and techniques allowed me to access the fluidity of the participants’ lives and the matrix of meanings that constitute their therapeutic daily life. The field research was carried out in Maputo city from January to May 2018. This article suggests that: (i) hemodialysis both relieves and generates suffering and produces multiple transformations and subjectivities in patients; (ii) there is a (re) conceptualization and (re) signification of body parts, especially kidneys and arms. We argue that the experience lived in and through the body in relation to hemodialysis machines destabilizes notions of body, of whole body, normality and morality, as well as problematizes boundaries between object and subject. Through processes of embodiment, the bodies are made and (re) invented daily in the therapeutic process, they become hybrid entities constituted by the junction of the human and the technological.