Post-Patienthood. Health Risks and the Reflexivity of Self-Embodiment

Abstract

By discussing social and technological developments in the system of biomedicine, the article aims to postulate an identity pattern in which human embodiment is inscribed in the context of advanced biotechnologies, especially genetics and genomics. The concept of post-patienthood refers to individual identity as a construct that relates the person’s present medical condition to a range of possible future scenarios, each formulated on the basis of genetic susceptibility to a particular disease. The post-patient, therefore, is neither healthy nor ill, and the present medical condition could be irrelevant to their sense of embodiment.