Constructing the Bodies of Critically Ill Children: an Ethnography of Intensive Care

Abstract

It is difficult not to be struck by the profound changes which occur in children who are admitted to a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Culturally recognizable ideas of children as being ‘full of life’ are dramatically transformed. In the PICU they lie, immobilized, at the boundary of life and death. This chapter outlines some processes involved in effecting this transformation. In doing so it questions the idea that human embodiment is simply concerned with issues of corporeality. Indeed, in a setting like a PICU, the definition of what exactly are the corporeal elements of a child’s body are open to negotiation. The boundaries of such a body are constituted by, and contested through, the attachment of non-corporeal, technological, elements. The contesting of such bodily boundaries therefore raises questions about a conception of children’s bodies simply as naturally occurring entities — biological and physical — and redirects attention to the notion that such entities may consist of heterogeneous elements — technological and figurative — in addition to those of a corporeal character.