ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we introduce the genesis of the volume and the main themes that the contributions address. We propose a glossary to help the reader navigate the different dimensions and connections of the concepts ‘violence’, ‘care’, and ‘cure’ that are used throughout. The volume tackles these notions within the medical encounter – broadly construed as a variety of spatio-temporal contact zones that, beyond the consulting room, also include bureaucratic systems, artistic venues, and the discursive space or the digital sphere – and seeks to foreground the prismatic network in which violence, care, and cure are reflected and refracted in a variety of often overlapping and divergent interpretative modes. Altogether, the book’s chapters – which are organised around four sections introduced by short, provocative ‘musings’ – attend to the complex interlacing of these three key terms and what to make of their entanglement by offering historical, practical, philosophical, personal, and aesthetic analyses of different medical scenes, objects, and concepts.
