ABSTRACT
As more of the world’s natural resources such as oil and mineral deposits – in principle “common wealth”, or owned by the multitude – have been appropriated as the capital by big business, and where most land is privately owned, common wealth has shrunk considerably, and health inequities and inequalities have expanded. W. Whitman’s “body electric”, in contrast, is a shared current and pulse, a common wealth, identifying with wider nature as common property. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari – echoing Whitman – would “sing the body electric” as the undivided and unconquered body – free from a directive and controlling gaze, but rather subject to an appreciative, poetic (and erotic – putatively banned in medicine) glance. This is the body of common wealth, democratized and shared in patient-centred and patient-directed medicine. Whitman’s lay medical vision, contra Foucault, is again echoed in the contemporary idea of Deleuze and Guattari (2013) of the “body without organs”.
