Anatomophilia

Devaleena Das is Associate Professor of Body, Sexuality, and Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

• List of IllustrationsPreface: From Grief to the Wisdom of the Body AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Anatomy of a Field, Anatomy of a Divide1. The Theory of Anatomophilia 2. Proclaiming Corporeal Justice 3. From Violence to Anatomical Striptease 4. Khwaja Siras and the Ethics of the Flesh5. Anatomophilia in Medical Education & PracticeAfterword: Toward an Ethics of AnatomophiliaNotesBibliography Index

"In this brave and beautiful book, Devaleena Das forges, out of profound grief and pain and courageous resilience, a theory and method rooted in the transformative power of bodily suffering and love. With the body of the goddess Kālī as presiding spirit, and drawing on the history and wisdom embodied in marginalized bodies worldwide, she offers a paradigm for care in the practice of medicine and in the world we collectively inhabit. In so doing, she productively challenges the hierarchies, fleshless abstractions, and priorities that characterize the practice and theory of medicine and of culture in the contemporary North." — Priscilla Wald, author of Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form"A very welcome addition to the interconnected fields of health humanities, gender studies, and postcolonial scholarship, Anatomophilia is both method and manifesto. Das breathes to life a theory of the body born from deep grief and profound love, from the experiences of bodies of color and bodies from the Global South, bodies engaged in protests and pedagogies, movements and medicines. What she offers, ultimately, is a way of being-in-the-world, a way of living that reorients scholars, healers, teachers, and activists to walk in the footsteps of the goddess Kālī, a path that is fierce, unflinching, powerful, and transformative." — Sayantani DasGupta, coauthor of Principles and Practices of Narrative Medicine