Global and local identities: screening the body (politic) in the medical drama series

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:This dissertation investigates the medical drama series as a television phenomenon whichforegrounds the body as central narrative device. By considering House M.D. and Jozi H asglobal and local manifestations of this genre, transnational, spatial and metafictionalcategorisations of the body are traced to reveal its nature as social spectacle, and meaningbearingcorporeal text. The body and its concomitant identities are exposed as continually andcontinuously screened inside, outside and, moreover, in relation to the hospital. As aninstitutional space, the hospital is (re)positioned in national and transnational discourses asnexus for personal and public, individual and societal, as well as local and global truths about thebody (politic). Michel Foucault's understanding of the human body, its position as part of thelarger body politic, and its control by the state is employed to foreground the bio-politicalclassification of the (ab)normal body. Both the hospital, as space for healing, controlling andcontaining the body, as well as the body, as a corporeal and a psychic space itself, aresignified as heterotopic spaces: part of, but also outside other places and bodies.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University