“A Matter of Perception”: Rhetoric, Embodiment, and
the Visual Practices of Anatomy Laboratory Education
My dissertation investigates how contemporary anatomy education incorporates and is facilitated through visual representations of the body. Through an ethnographic study of the Program in Human Anatomy Education at the University of Minnesota, I explore how the visual practices of observation, presentation, and representation are used to teach and learn anatomy. My study builds on research in rhetoric and scientific communication that examines the role visuals play in the production of scientific knowledge.
By focusing on the anatomy lesson, my dissertation will contribute to the subfield of visual rhetoric or visual communication, which seeks to understand how visual representations are used to make and communicate knowledge claims (Kostelnick & Hassett, 2003). Communicating science to both experts and laypersons involves the creation and distribution of “visual inscriptions,” or visual displays of evidence generated to represent, contain, and shape research findings or observational phenomena (Latour, 1990). These visual displays offer a form of evidence that is mobile, reproducible, and persuasive. In other words, visual displays, in the form of images, charts, and graphs are used to support or refute statements, claims, and hypotheses (Latour, 1990). As such, these visual displays carry a persuasive force that influences how scientific arguments are formed (Gross, Harmon, & Reidy, 2002).
The anatomy lab presents a dynamic instance of visual rhetoric in action. During their education in the lab, students are confronted with questions of both what the body is and what it means. Through their interactions with visual displays – the bodies, the models, the illustrations – students come to see the body in a new way. They develop a type of “professional vision” that is part socialization and part visual orientation, enabling them to see particular objects according to the logic of their discipline (Goodwin, 1993). Through the work of science, one learns to see as a scientist by making use of scientific knowledge and texts, by performing and embodying the practices of science. But the role cadavers and other visuals play in this process has not been explored previously. And how does learning to view the body as an artifact of science influence a student’s perception of the body?
I am particularly interested in how anatomical knowledge is discernable in and on the body through the visual and embodied practices of dissection, observation, and demonstration. This knowledge, in the form of terms and spatial orientations, is represented through visual displays and actual human bodies. In turn, students and teachers use these visual texts to map this information onto the various bodies in the lab, thus reading the body (both the cadavers’ and their own) as a biological object. To learn anatomy, then, is to experience a necessary tension between the science of the body and the personhood of the body.
Research Questions and Methodology:
My project is guided by the following research questions:
- What is the role of the body in the teaching and learning of anatomy in a cadaver-based lab course?
- What are the means through which the body is displayed in this educational space? (I.e., through what modes, media, and texts is the body represented?)
- What practices do teachers and students use to teach and learn anatomy in this setting?
My methodology blends ethnography (participant-observations and in-depth interviews) with rhetorical analysis in my attempt to describe the visual and embodied rhetorics of the anatomy lab. Specifically, my research involves (1) observations of educational spaces (both the graduate and undergraduate gross anatomy course); (2) audio-taped interviews with instructors, TAs, and students from both courses, as well as the anatomy bequest program staff; (3) the collection of teaching material created for both courses; (4) photographs of the lecture and laboratory spaces, technologies, & equipment; and (5) the collection of promotional material concerning the anatomy bequest program (websites, forms, brochures).
Rhetorical Theory and Embodiment:
My rhetorical analysis, which explores how anatomical knowledge is displayed, communicated, and embodied, is guided by the conceptualizations of rhetoric and discourse put forth by Kenneth Burke (1950) and Michel Foucault (1972, 1973, 1977). From their work, I understand rhetoric to be the means by which words, texts, and discourses exert an explicit or implicit persuasive force that forms attitudes and beliefs, encourages actions and practices, and constitutes social phenomena. Thus rhetoric, which can involve written, visual, oral, and gestural or embodied modes, shapes the objects it describes.
Because I am also investigating constructions of embodiment, namely how discourses and practices become inscribed on and are enacted through the body, I draw from research on embodiment and social practice, specifically that of Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1980) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945, 1968). Their work in particular has been of interest to a growing group of researchers who focus on what Carol Berkenkotter has termed “embodied practices,” or types of social action and social knowledge that are constructed and communication in and through the materiality and physical movements of the body (Berkenkotter & Thein 2005). Those who study embodiment argue that the body often operates as a tool through which one learns the discourses, knowledge systems, and bodily dispositions or “habitus” of a particular group (Bourdieu 1977). The anatomy lab is an important location for the study of visual and embodied practices, because of the ways students and instructors learn and teach anatomical terms, positions, and structures by manipulating their own and other bodies of the lab.
Potential Significance of the Research:
If, in learning anatomy, the student not only learns structures and functions, but also comes to a new recognition of what the body means, I see a pressing need to understand what role real bodies play in communicating anatomy to future doctors and dentists. This is particularly important in light of the increased use of digital technology as a substitute for cadaveric dissection. My hope is that my study will not only make a contribution to visual rhetoric, the rhetoric of medicine, and embodied rhetoric but also to anatomy education, which currently is uninformed on visual communication research.
Key References:
- Berkenkotter, Carol with Amanda Haertling Thein. “Settings, Speech Genres, and the Institutional Organziation of Practices.” Folia Linguistica 39.1/2 (2005): 115-142.
- Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge UP, 1977.
- Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1980.
- Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of CA, 1950.
- Emerson, Robert, Rachel Fretz, & Linda Shaw. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1995
- Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge & “The Discourse on Language.” Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
- Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. 1963. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. 1973. New York: Vintage, 1994.
- Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.1975. Trans. Alan Sheridan. 1977. New York: Vintage, 1995.
- Goodwin, Charles. “Professional Vision.” American Anthropologist 96.3 (Sept. 1993): 606-633.
- Gross, Alan, Joseph Harmon, & Michael Reidy. Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present. New York: Oxford UP, 2002.
- Kostelnick, Charles & Michael Hassett. Shaping Knowledge: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions. Cardondale, IL: SIUP, 2003.
- Latour, Bruno. “Drawing Things Together.” Representation in Scientific Practice. Ed. Michael Lynch & Steve Woolgar. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1990. 19-68
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. New York: Routledge, 1945/2003.
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. Ed. Claude Lefort. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. EvanstonIL: Northwestern UP, 1968.
