The test of knowledge. Proposals for an ecology of diagnosis of Katrin Solhdju - Translated from the German by Anne Le Goff - Dingdingdong Edition - September 2015 - 224 Pages
The possibilities of an ecology of diagnosis (an essay on contemporary diagnostic practices, in relation to ancient oracular practices).
"The truth of an idea is not a stable property inherent in it. The truth comes to the idea. It becomes true, events make it true. Its truth is in fact an event, a process: the process that consists in verifying itself, which consists in verifying itself".
William James (1)
Some medical diagnoses transform the person, splitting their life in two. This is particularly the case for incurable diseases, for which medicine cannot present itself as a curative art - as in the case of Huntington's disease, a rare and for the moment incurable neurological disorder, with its presymptomatic genetic test that claims to announce their future to the descendants of those affected: the "at risk" people.
How can such diagnostic practices be constructed in a different way, so as to enable them to keep up with this "knowledge of the future" that genetics now gives doctors?
Radiating from the particular situation of Huntington's disease, this book draws its reflections from ancient oracles to the sources of our contemporary medicine, in an attempt to renew the ways of apprehending these predictive gestures which, due to progress in genetics, could well concern us all.
The Dingdingdong collective, Institute for the Co-production of Knowledge on Huntington's Disease, mobilizes multiple practices and expertise from research in the humanities and the arts, in order to provide itself with the means to explore Huntington's disease like a still partly unknown planet (see the Dingdingdong Manifesto).
Historian and philosopher of science, Katrin Solhdju is a researcher at the Zentrum für Literatur und Kulturforschung in Berlin. Having studied the history and epistemology of certain experimental and medical practices such as self-experimentation and organ transplantation, she is interested in the practice of medical diagnosis and the bioethical problems associated with it. Katrin Solhdju is a member of Dingdingdong.
(1) William James - Pragmatism. A new name for old ways of thinking, trans. fr. Nathalie Ferron Paris, Flammarion, 2007, p 226
