ABSTRACT
In this chapter Thor Eirik Eriksen explores some aspects of the broken body. The broken body refers to human experiences and awareness of something being different from the normal, out of balance or disturbed. His starting point is that our habitual thinking about such events is influenced by an asymmetry in the relationship between object and phenomenon. This means that static descriptions, including those necessary for medical research, tend to replace points of access to the experience of being a living and suffering human. Despite undeniable advances and successes in medicine, Eriksen emphasizes how we can benefit from philosophers such as Gabriel Marcel, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Luc Marion in attempts to explore and challenge this asymmetry. More specifically, he reflects on phenomena such as brokenness, uncanniness and affectedness. As concepts, these are markers and formal indicators. This means that they do not theorize, explain or describe properties of entities. They point toward the event as a whole.
