The Body Within: Art, Medicine and Visualization

The central question of this volume is, whether present day medical visualisation techniques like ultrasound, endoscopy, CT, MRI and PET-scans mark a significant shift in the experience of bodily interiority. These visualisation techniques enable not only medical researchers and practitioners to look inside living bodies without literally opening them, but their inhabitants as well. This new experiential possibility may have profound implications for the ways in which the relations between 'body', 'self', and 'world' are configured, both on the level of cultural discourses and practices and on the level of individual experiences. The contributions to this volume investigate the body within as an historical, social and cultural construct, constituted in the interchange between technology, knowledge, representation and media.

The central question of this interdisciplinary volume is, whether present day medical visualisation techniques like ultrasound, endoscopy, CT, MRI and PET-scans mark a significant shift in the historical and cultural construction and experience of bodily interiority.

Renée van de Vall, PhD (1992) Philosophy, Amsterdam University, is associate professor of media culture at the University of Maastricht. She has published on philosophy of art, spectatorship and contemporary visual culture, including At the Edges of Vision (2008).

Robert Zwijnenberg, PhD (1995) Philosophy, Amsterdam University, is professor of art history at Leiden University. He publishes on philosophy of art, and on the relation between the arts and sciences, including The Writings and Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci (1999).