Surgery

“In Goffman’s opinion, the participants regard the patient-body like a sacred object, irrespective of its owner’s status. But this ‘sacredness’ of the body cannot be located in itself, nor solely in the medical perspective on it. It is rooted in its relation to the person inhabiting it: Its character is that of a loan with a temporary status as an object. The patient-body is, as it were, a ‘virtual participant’ (Hirschauer, 306). . . . Distance from the body of everyday life is also distance from disorderly affects. They shall not disturb the surgeons any more when they are making an incision – ‘with a blend of arrogance and innocence’ – into an anonymous, dumb and disfigured body. . . . the symbolic function of sterility procedures is primarily related not to the boundaries of the operating theatre but to those of the patient. So, although the blood is not free from bacteria, blood-stained instruments are treated as ‘sterile’ because ‘being clean’ is to be understood relative to the patient-body. It differentiates anything belonging to this body from foreign germs (306). . . . Sterility procedures reconstruct the injured skin as a zone-like boundary between persons. They restore this territory for somebody who cannot defend it, and thereby constitute an intensification of the ‘etiquette of touch’ described by Young. . . . the ritual dimension of surgery is due not to sacralization but to a protection against desacralization in the course of transforming patients into objects that are as ‘natural’ as possible” (307).