Frankel Alexandra Vieux, Stern Eva-Marie
Department of Social Anthropology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Front Sociol. 2025 Jan 15;9:1434500. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2024.1434500. eCollection 2024.
Dominant narratives of solid-organ transplantation foreground vocabularies of gratitude. Solid-organ transplantation is often celebrated in biomedicine for its high-tech innovation and specialization. But transplantation also includes the organizations that oversee the distribution of donated organs to potential recipients who disproportionately outnumber available organs. Wait-listing for transplant weighs urgency and fitness for transplant against availability, as individuals must simultaneously demonstrate that their conditions are severe enough to warrant transplantation while also showing they are well enough to withstand the transplant procedure that is meant to return the individual from critical illness to able-bodied health. This article considers how promises of cure make affective demands on transplant recipients. Dominant transplantation narratives and metaphors frame transplantation as "rebirth" and the "gift of life." But this framework constrains transplant recipients' affective and emotional repertoires, positioning gratitude as the primary-if not only-acceptable feeling for performing that the "gift of life" was deserved. Such narrowly sanctioned possibilities for expression elide the affective complexities of transplant recipients' experiences and foreclose opportunities for expressing anger and frustration. This paper unpacks the politics of verbalizing anger among solid-organ transplant recipients at an urban North American hospital. Using arts-based sensory ethnographic interviews with 27 participants, this paper draws on affect theory to understand how transplant recipients critique and protest curative imaginaries while also upholding them. Theorizations from Critical Disability Studies provide generative ways to question negative feelings and more fully understand recipients' experiences.
实体器官移植的主流叙事突出感恩的话语。实体器官移植在生物医学领域常因其高科技创新和专业化而备受赞誉。但移植还涉及到一些组织，它们负责监督将捐赠器官分配给潜在受者，而潜在受者的数量远远超过了可用器官的数量。等待移植的名单会权衡移植的紧迫性和适合性与器官的可获得性，因为个人必须同时证明他们的病情严重到足以接受移植，同时还要表明他们身体状况良好，足以承受旨在使个人从重病恢复到健康状态的移植手术。本文探讨了治愈的承诺如何对移植受者提出情感要求。主流的移植叙事和隐喻将移植描述为“重生”和“生命的礼物”。但这种框架限制了移植受者的情感和情绪表达范围，将感恩定位为对“生命的礼物”当之无愧的主要——如果不是唯一——可接受的情感。这种狭隘认可的表达可能性掩盖了移植受者经历的情感复杂性，并排除了表达愤怒和沮丧的机会。本文剖析了北美一家城市医院中实体器官移植受者表达愤怒的政治因素。通过对27名参与者进行基于艺术的感官民族志访谈，本文运用情感理论来理解移植受者如何在批判和抗议治愈想象的同时又维护它们。批判性残疾研究的理论为质疑负面情绪和更全面理解受者的经历提供了富有启发性的方法。
