Power over the human body. The presence of medicine in the mass culture of the twentieth century

Abstract

The goal of the article is an answer to the question: why the role of medical categories in describing issues concerning human being is constantly growing and what are social and civilizational consequences of this process? A justifying research hypothesis is that the process of medicalization is increasing since the 18th century. By medicalization we mean a process through which traditional cate-gories of describing the world – religious, philosophical, ethical and esthetical – are being dominated and substituted by medical categories and concepts. Research will be conducted on the empirical level of of mass culture exemplifying changes in common consciousness. Research on mass culture phenomena will be conducted on the basis of cultural and literary studies’ methodology: 1) In the paradigm of Northrop Frye’s new criticism in order to show the contents of mass culture representations; 2) In the dialogical paradigm of Michail Bachtin in order to indicate relationships between mass culture phenomena and historical context of European civilization; 3) In the paradigm of dialectic criticism of Fredric Jameson in order to analyze relationships between mass culture representations of the world and real social problems.