FROM THE ADMINISTERED BODY TO THE SIGNIFYING BODY: BIOETHICS, BIOPOLITICS, AND THE SACRED IN THE MEDICALIZATION OF MATERNITY.

The article proposes a reflection on the relations between bioethics, biopolitics, and the medicalization of social life, starting from the thesis that bioethics lacking biopolitical awareness remains naïve, while a biopolitics lacking ethical reflection becomes cynical. On the basis of Foucault's d...

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Publicado en:Journal for the Study of Religions & Ideologies Vol. 25; no. 74; pp. 78 - 101
Autor principal: SANDU, ANTONIO
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: S.A.C.R.I. The Academic Society for the Research of Religions & Ideologies Summer2026
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      aug:
        au: SANDU, ANTONIO
        affil: "Ștefan cel Mare" University of Suceava, Faculty of Law and Administrative Sciences, Suceava, Romania
      su:
        Bioethics
        Biopolitics (Philosophy)
        Power (Social sciences)
        Ritual
        Maternal health services
        Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984
        Cesarean section
        Medicalization
        Iatrogenic diseases
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        subj:
          Bioethics
          Biopolitics (Philosophy)
          Power (Social sciences)
          Ritual
          Maternal health services
          Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984
          Cesarean section
          Medicalization
          Iatrogenic diseases
      keyword:
        bioethics
        biopolitics
        body as surface of communication
        informed consent
        medicalization of social life
        ontology of the sacred
        relational autonomy
      ab: The article proposes a reflection on the relations between bioethics, biopolitics, and the medicalization of social life, starting from the thesis that bioethics lacking biopolitical awareness remains naïve, while a biopolitics lacking ethical reflection becomes cynical. On the basis of Foucault's definitions of biopolitics (1976, 1997) and Illich's critique of social and cultural iatrogenesis (1976), the study distinguishes between the anatomopolitics of the body and the biopolitics of the population, and constructs a triple analytical grid -- sociological, bioethical, and biopolitical -- for contemporary phenomena of medicalization. To this grid is added Aurel Codoban's model of the body as a surface of communication (2011), read here within the horizon of an ontology of the sacred and of the communicational construction of reality: medicalization does not leave the body "neutral", but rather shifts its regime of signification, from the sacred toward the statistical and the communicational. The argument is tested through a case study devoted to the medicalization of maternity and to caesarean birth, in which both the bioethical--biopolitical tension and the ideological capture of the maternal body by pseudo-scientific "great replacement" narratives are analysed -- narratives whose quasi-religious structure is critically examined. The conclusion contends that a physician trained solely in bioethics, without an understanding of the power relations traversing the medical act, risks becoming a technical executant, while a physician trained solely in biopolitical terms, without bioethical principles, risks confusing public health with social control.
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    language: English
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