This conference asks whether the biomedical humanities can intervene in the very constitution of the phenomena they study. We propose to rethink the body as a relational entity shaped by biological, social, environmental, and existential assemblages—moving beyond traditional partitions (body/mind, nature/culture, biological/social) that structure contemporary medicine. These dichotomies, by assigning allegedly separate domains to different disciplines, obscure the fundamental entanglements that characterize embodied existence.

Argument

Our point of departure is a triple observation : 1. Despite many efforts, notably from psychosomatics, the distinction between body and mind, the physical and the psychological, remains relatively untouched within contemporary reflections about medical practices and disciplines. 2. Parallelly, therapeutic practices that claim to intervene on both the body and the mind, or that even refuse operating based on this opposition and its ontological and epistemological underpinnings (osteopathy, for example), have a difficult standing within the biomedical realm. 3. Consequently, considering that the (medical) humanities could on their part “intervene (…) in ontological questions—in particular of etiology, pathogenesis, intervention, and cure—rather than, as has commonly been the case, leaving such questions largely to the domains of the life sciences and biomedicine” (Viney, Callard and Woods 2015), remains a vivid challenge. In reference to Donna Haraway’s notion of NatureCultures (Haraway, 2004) on the one hand, and to Spinoza’s famous dictum that we “never know what a body can do” (Spinoza et al., 2020) – famously discussed by Deleuze (Deleuze, 2003)—we therefore propose to take up this challenge by thinking with and through the notion of BodyCultures.

In the footsteps of Whitehead and Woods’ proposition for The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities (2016), we refuse both the model of the humanities in service to biomedicine (which would consist only of a project of mere humanization) and that of purely antagonistic critique (denouncing its reductionism), and advocate for an approach based on entanglement. This perspective recognizes that the humanities and social sciences are productively entangled with “biomedical culture” : health and illness do not emerge from the simple addition of separate “biological”, “psychological” and “sociocultural” components, but from complex assemblages in which material, discursive, affective, and politico-economic elements are co-constituted by one another. Far from simply contextualizing already-constituted biomedical objects, critical medical humanities can thus legitimately claim an active role in defining what a pathology is, contributing to shaping etiology, pathogenesis, and modes of intervention.

Echoing this ontological ambition, our conference proposes to think about BodyCultures beyond the traditional partitions that still essentially structure contemporary modes of thought in general and medical concepts in particular. This requires questioning inherited dualisms—body/mind, nature/culture, biological/social, normal/pathological, fact/value—that fragment body-cultural realities and reduce their complexity. These dichotomies, by assigning allegedly separate domains to different disciplines, obscure the fundamental entanglements that characterize embodied existence (Haraway, 1991 ; Mol, 2002).

We are interested in approaches that think of BodyCultures as relational and processual entities, shaped by multiple assemblages where biological, mind-related, social, environmental, and existential factors intertwine (Barla, 2019 ; Pitts-Taylor, 2016). This perspective invites us to consider how BodyCultures are simultaneously produced by and producers of their environments, how they bear the traces of power relations, social inequalities, and structural violence (Ford et al., 2024). Such an approach requires developing alternative conceptualizations that account for the constitutive multiplicity of the corporeal without reducing it to one or another of its aspects. It also requires examining how these new understandings of BodyCultures can transform research, diagnostic, and care practices (Berg & Mol, 1998), opening up modes “imaginatively disclos(ing) possibilities for alternative configurations of the worlds in which the realities of health and disease are produced” (Savransky & Rosengarten, 2016).

We propose three complementary axes of reflection that interrogate the disciplinary and conceptual partitions structuring contemporary medicine on different levels. Proposals may address one or more of these axes or propose supplementary perspectives relevant to the general problematic.

Axis 1 : Epistemological Reconfigurations

The first axis examines how specific epistemological approaches enable the reconfiguration of medical problematics themselves. By contesting the conceptual frameworks that define a priori what counts as a legitimate medical object, the humanities do not merely interpret already-established biomedical facts : they actively participate in redefining the questions medicine asks, the methods deemed appropriate to answer them, and the criteria for validity of the knowledge produced. These epistemological reconfigurations open the possibility of ontological interventions by transforming the very conditions of knowledge production about the body, health, and pathology. Moreover, by modifying our understanding of what our objects of interest are—their constitution, their limits, their modes of existence—these new epistemologies also transform our behaviors toward them : our ways of observing, measuring, and treating them. This transformation can thus affect the very reality of the phenomena studied, potentially modifying, for example, the natural history of diseases themselves (Sullivan, 2015 ; Wilson, 2015).

Axis 2 : “Bad Objects” for Medicine ?

The second axis focuses on “bad objects” for medicine, meaning objects that resist established biomedical modes of knowing. Indeed, through their uncertain epistemological status, so-called “contested illnesses” or “medically unexplained symptoms” allow us to reveal the ontological presuppositions that render certain bodycultural phenomena elusive to medicine (Dumes, 2020). These conditions—which escape standard nosological classifications and resist established diagnostic protocols—expose the limits of dominant definitions of the body, the mind, health, and pathology. By analyzing what makes these diseases “contested” or “inexplicable,” we interrogate the regimes of bodycultural existence that contemporary medicine struggles to recognize, and explore how other conceptualizations of the BodyCultures could make these phenomena exist otherwise than as failures of medical knowledge or suspicions about the reality of suffering (Sharpe & Greco, 2019).

Axis 3 : Alternative Practices and Ontological Pluralism

The third axis in interested in care practices that create other types of relationships with BodyCultures or rather make them real through their modes of attention and cultures of sensibility in the first place. These approaches—often marginalized or delegitimized by conventional medicine—mobilize alternative regimes that do not put the entities that are the focus of biomedicine center-stage. By examining how so-called traditional, complementary, and alternative therapeutic practices produce distinct body-cultural ontologies, we interrogate the possibilities of a medical pluralism that, rather than establishing hierarchies between modes of existence, would recognize the multiplicity of ways in which BodyCultures can be done, performed, affected, cared for, and modified (Brosnan et al., 2018 ; Groenevelt & Slatman, 2024).

Submission Guidelines

Proposals for papers (300-500 words), accompanied by a short biography (150 words maximum), should be sent before December 15th to the following address : charline.marbaix@umons.ac.be

Proposals must be submitted in English.

Selected papers will be allotted 40 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of discussion.

Conference will take place at the University of Mons, Belgium, on June 17-18-19, 2026

Organizing committee members

• Julie D’Haussy (UMons)
• Laurence Dufour-Villeneuve (UdeM – UMons)
• Charline Marbaix (UMons / FNRS)
• Katrin Solhdju (UMons / FNRS)

References

Barla, J. (2019). The Techno-Apparatus of Bodily Production  : A New Materialist Theory of Technology and the Body (p. 232). Transcript-Verlag.

Berg, M., & Mol, A. (1998). Differences in Medicine. Unraveling Practices, Techniques, and Bodies. Duke University Press.

Brosnan, C., Vuolanto, P., & Brodin Danell, J.-A. (2018). Complementary and alternative medicine  : Knowledge production and social transformation (Vol. 1‑1 online resource). Palgrave Macmillan, imprint published by Springer Nature ; WorldCat. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73939-7

Deleuze, G. (2003). Spinoza, philosophie pratique ([Nouv. éd.]). Édition de Minuit ; WorldCat.

Dumes, A. A. (2020). Divided Bodies. Duke University Press ; JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv15kxg1w

Ford, A., Malcolm, R., Erikainen, S., Raeder, L., & Roberts, C., 1968-. (2024). Hormonal theory  : A rebellious glossary (Vol. 1‑1 online resource : illustrations). Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc ; WorldCat. https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx ?p =31015716

Groenevelt, I., & Slatman, J. (2024). On the Affectivity of Touch  : Enacting Bodies in Dutch Osteopathy. Medical Anthropology, 43(7), 641‑654. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2024.2410251

Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women  : The Reinvention of Nature (Free Association Books).

Haraway, D. (2004). The Promises of Monsters  : A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others. Dans The Haraway Reader (Routledge).

Mol, A. (2002). The Body Multiple  : Ontology in Medical Practice (Barbara Herrnstein Smith and E. Roy Weintraub). Duke University Press.

Pitts-Taylor, V. (Éd.). (2016). Mattering  : Feminism, Science, and Materialism. NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479833498.001.0001

Savransky, M., & Rosengarten, M. (2016). What is nature capable of  ? Evidence, ontology, and speculative medical humanities. Medical Humanities, 42(3), 166. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2015-010858

Sharpe, M., & Greco, M. (2019). Chronic fatigue syndrome and an illness-focused approach to care  : Controversy, morality and paradox. Medical Humanities, 45(2), 183‑187. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011598

Spinoza, B., Akkerman, F., Steenbakkers, P., Moreau, P. F., Audié, F., & Charrak, A. (2020). Ethica = Éthique (1re édition). PUF ; WorldCat.

Sullivan, S. (2015). The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression. Oxford University Press.

Viney W., Callard F., Woods A. (2015). Critical medical humanities : embracing entanglement, taking risks. Medical Humanities, 41, 2-7. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2015-010692

Whitehead, A., & Woods, A. (Éds.). (2016). The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities. Edinburgh University Press ; JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1bgzddd

Wilson, E. A. (2015). Gut Feminism. Duke University Press.