Medical Authority and Its Discontents: A Case of Organized Non-Compliance

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This research explores a particular case study of the regulation of bodies within a discourse of knowledge and provides examples of resistance to such control. Following Foucault, there has been increasing interest in how discourses of knowledge exert regulatory power over bodies and how the site of social control becomes the body itself. This paper is especially interested in how AIDS activism illustrates the power struggle between medical authority and patient non-compliance. In concrete terms, the discussion includes: the surveillance of the body and the concern over medical compliance as affirmations of the power of medical authorities; examples of organized resistance to this discourse of knowledge; the resistance activities of people with AIDS (PWA) groups and AIDS activists; and the implications and possible directions of this model.

This publication has 26 references indexed in Scilit: